Bo Bichette’s Defense Remains An Ongoing Controversy

The New York Mets are waiting on third baseman Bo Bichette, and he’s waiting on the World Series. Bichette has a massive opt-out available in his current contract that pays him $42 million a year, and his decision will have an even more massive effect on whatever decisions the Mets make this offseason, especially if he decides to walk. 

Anthony Franco did a piece on all this in MLBTradeRumors.com, and most of what he wrote was a rehash of a lot of what’s already out there about Bichette. 

But Franco did use a couple of metrics that show why Bichette’s defense remains an ongoing source of controversy.They’re dramatically split, so let’s see who’s saying what and what it means for the Mets’ future going forward. 

For starters, Statcast had Bichette graded as what Franco called a “scratch” defender. Meanwhile,  Defensive Runs Saved had him at eight runs below par, which the sixth-worst mark at the position, according to Franco. 

The writer went on to say that  Bichette made the routine plays, with only Manny Machado and Alex Bregman having a higher fielding percentage among those with 500+ innings. But Bichette isn’t the “rangiest” defender, to use Franco’s description, and he has what was described as a “fringy” arm for the left side of the infield.

He’s not wrong about any of that, but what does the proverbial eye test show? If you watched a lot of Mets games, you saw a player whose footwork improved on some of those ordinary plays, especially on balls where he had to back up to handle an in-between hop. 

But his arm was worse than just “fringy” by a lot. Bichette didn’t make a ton of throwing errors, but a lot of his throws early on where up the line, and the Mets had a series of inexperienced first baseman who had all kinds of problems with this part of his game. 

Bichette got better at this, but he never really fit with the plan of GM David Stearns to emphasize run prevention, although he would have made have made the grade in that regard at second base. 

But Bichette was overmatched on a lot of ground balls, and he often made costly mistakes that didn’t quite translate into errors. They cost the Mets big in multiple games, especially since the Mets offense was so poor that they didn’t have much margin for error. All of this should be factored in when Bichette makes his call, as it will play a big role in the Mets’ future.