Dante Bichette first saw Rowdy Tellez when he was still playing in Double A.
At the time, Bichette watched Tellez play against his oldest son, Dante Jr., who was in the Yankees farm system. What struck the 57-year-old former major leaguer most about Tellez in 2016 was not his size, stature or power profile, but his ability to hit the ball.
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“He was actually more of a pure hitter that could hit for average and use the opposite field a little bit more, and to me, he wasn’t a guy who tried to lift the ball,” the elder Bichette said. “He was a guy who just was 260 pounds and he accidentally had a lot of power — but he was a good hitter first.”
Fast forward to 2019. After an inconsistent rookie season for Tellez, Bo Bichette invited his Blue Jays teammate to work on hitting with him and his father during the offseason at their home in St. Petersburg, Fla.
In Tellez, Dante Bichette saw a young player who had lost his offensive identity between the minors and the majors and was hunting for home runs, not hits. He saw a bit of himself in Tellez, too.
“I came up a big power hitter that didn’t know a whole lot and had to learn how to hit. I had to learn how to hit with two strikes,” said Bichette, who played 14 years in the majors and now is a special assistant with the Blue Jays. “I had to learn the game a little bit, so I felt like I knew where to go with him.”
Under Bichette’s tutelage that offseason and into the shutdown ahead of the 2020 season, Tellez worked on his two-strike approach, building confidence in those situations and, in turn, rediscovering the hitter he used to be with a focus on putting the ball in play and using the entire field.
“He’s going to hit home runs on accident,” Bichette said. “He doesn’t have to try to. He can hit a line drive out of the park; he can pop up a ball out of the park. To me … his goal was to put the ball in play more often and just square the ball up more often. And he’s done that so far. Since we’ve worked together, he’s been really good.”
With his revamped two-strike approach, Tellez hit .283 with a .886 OPS in 35 games in 2020 before a knee strain ended his season early. He cut his strikeout rate from 2019 nearly in half. It’s a small sample, to be sure, but Tellez credited the work with Bichette as a big reason for his improvement. Looking ahead to this season, Tellez said he wants to build on the progress he made. If he can, the Blue Jays first baseman could be primed for a breakout season.
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“If Rowdy breaks out, it’s going to be huge because his tools are so big,” Bichette said. “He has the potential to hit a ton of homers and hit for average. If he breaks out, and absolutely I believe he can, he could just be a monster.”
In 2019, Tellez was swinging for the fences because he believed that’s what was expected of a guy as big and strong as him. He hit 21 home runs in 111 games. But he often chased pitches outside of the zone, finishing with a 37.2 percent chase rate, and tried to do too much during at-bats. His strikeout rate was 28.4 percent, above the MLB average.
“It was just pressure, adding pressure to myself, trying to do more than really I could, trying to hit a ‘five-run home run with nobody on base’ type of deal,” Tellez said.
Bichette said he’s seen young hitters, like Tellez, fall into the habit of going up to the plate with a home run in mind.
“Once you look at him, you see home runs,” Bichette said. “That’s what you want from him. And I’m sure he heard it — ‘this guy could hit 40 homers’ — and he’s still hearing it. But that’s not how he’s going to get the 40 homers. I know how he got to trying to hit homers, and it was actually pretty easy to get him off of it.”
Since Bichette joined the Blue Jays coaching staff last year, hitting with two strikes has been an area of focus. Guys like Teoscar Hernández, Randal Grichuk and, of course, his son Bo have benefitted from Bichette’s two-strike teachings.
With Tellez, Bichette said they first worked on getting him to stop trying to lift the high fastball, which was causing Tellez to swing underneath it, instead attempting to get on top of the fastball to make better contact. “What that is is just taking (out) any thought of trying to lift the ball with two strikes,” Bichette said. “If you take that out of your mind, then you won’t come under the ball, you’ll be able to get on top of the ball.”
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With the breaking ball, Bichette advised Tellez to let the ball travel deeper — closer to the catcher’s mitt — which would make it easier to put in play. With Tellez’s naturally quick bat speed, he could still generate power, even if he was making contact farther back in the zone. “If you let the ball get deeper with two strikes, you’re going to see the ball longer, and you have a little more time to make a decision: swing or don’t swing?” Bichette said. “And any time you got more time, you’re going to make better decisions.”
Beyond the mechanical adjustments, Bichette also helped instill a positive mental approach in Tellez. It’s easy for hitters to become fearful in a two-strike count, but Bichette reminded Tellez to trust himself. He also reinforced that fouling off a pitch is an acceptable outcome. After all, it means he’s still up there hitting.
“Trusting that (the pitcher’s) got to come to you, he’s got to throw it in the strike zone,” Tellez said. “Believing in yourself, believing that you’re going to be better than him regardless, better than the guy that’s on the mound, and compete. He’s trying to get you out and you’re trying to get a hit, but if you can better him, it’s not always that you got the hit or that you put a good swing on the ball; it could be that you fouled off a nasty pitch that bought yourself another pitch. So trust, belief and competing were big words that stick out to me from (Bichette).”
Bichette’s advice paid dividends. In 2020, Tellez made more contact with pitches inside the zone, per Statcast data. He also lowered his strikeout rate to 15.7 percent, a drop of nearly 13 percentage points from 2019. With two strikes, he hit .260/.275/.420 in 2020 compared with .107/.197/.249 in 2019. Against breaking balls, he hit .281 in 2020 compared with .137 a year earlier. He also pulled the ball less and increased his output to the opposite field by about 7 percentage points. He had eight home runs in 35 games, which put him on pace for 37 in a 162-game season.
Through the first half of camp this spring, Bichette said he’s been impressed with Tellez. The 25-year-old has bought into the hitting approach they mapped out, and mentally appears calmer and more confident.
Tellez is in a comfortable place in camp. He spent the offseason reading books such as “The Art of War” by ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu to tap into his own mentality and learn how he can grow as a player and a person. He’s worked on his ability to stay even-keeled in preparation for the long season, and in his words, “not getting too high when I have those mountains and not getting too low when I have those valleys” referring to his on-field performance. This season, he aims to minimize those peaks and valleys and be consistent at the plate.
Even with his improved plate approach, the question is how many at-bats will Tellez get to use it? Tellez will share first-base duties with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. And while Tellez should get plenty of starts as the designated hitter, the position will cycle through the rest of the team, especially to get the odd-man-out outfielder in the lineup.
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Tellez isn’t stressing about his playing time, though. Instead, he’s focussed on being a supportive teammate and making the most of every plate appearance he does get.
“We’re all here for the same goal. We all want to win a championship, so whether I play 162 games or I play 62 games, I just want to be a factor in each setting, where you look back and say, ‘Wow, there’s a moment where that sticks out.’ I just don’t want to be a guy that’s there, but isn’t really there. I want to have an impact.”
(Photo: Douglas P. DeFelice / Getty Images)
