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Afterwards, at the side of the cage, they have a lengthy intense conversation and then hug it out.

“Just taking it back to basics because none of the complicated things I’ve tried has worked,’’ explains Bichette. “I think it’s important for me to get back down to basics and remember who I am. I’ve searched for more quite a bit and need to be content with being who I am.’’

He had through repeated slumps — or a chronic and prolonged hitting drought in a season that’s just halfway over — forgotten the essence of himself. What made him a two-time all-star, twice led the American League in hits. A consistent contact hitter with a career .291 batting average, not the .229 attached to his name through Thursday, not the .197 of June, not the .100 through the early days of July.

Who are you, Bo?

A 26-year-old incubated in the Jays system who could own this town as a marquee star with a pleasing personality and good looks and the trademark tresses held back by a bandana. Bichette smiles wryly at the suggestion: “I think I’m a great hitter. And whatever comes with that comes with that. But I have to be a great hitter first.’’

Bichette has been that and is confident he’ll be that again. But as the trade deadline looms, the fan base restive over a bust of a team, for the first time in his life Bichette finds himself a subject of trade speculation. On social media, a get-what-you-can-now toxicity has taken hold.

He is aware. “It’s all over the place.’’

There’s not a waking moment when Bichette isn’t thinking about hitting. It consumes him, the why of this barren season. He believes he’s got some of it figured out.

“I’m going to be bluntly honest, I need to find a little more edge. For whatever reason, things that have given me that edge are not there for me as much as in the past. I can’t tell you why. I need fire and I need edge. Every single day I’m trying to find that.’’

Here’s the weird thing: A dive into analytics shows that Bichette is bang-on with career metrics: striking out less than he ever has, working more walks, line-drive rate the best in six years, in-the-zone contact better than his best season (2020). The only category where his performance has taken a plunge — from career-high 9.2 per cent to career-low 4.7 per cent — is barrelling the ball (well-struck balls combining exit velocity and launch angle). A historically fierce ball-striker, the absence of barrelling means weak contact: groundball outs, shallow fly balls. And a nosediving batting average.

“He’s mishitting balls,’’ says hitting coach Guillermo Martinez.

Fixable with constant adjusting. “The thing that we’ve been working on is just keeping things real simple in his work. Making sure that he’s executing his routine. He’s been very independent throughout his career when it comes to hitting, and one thing he takes pride in is how consistent his routine is.

“I think he would admit to you that his work hasn’t been as consistent,’’ Martinez continues. “I’m not saying he’s not working hard, because he is. But the way he thinks about his swing tends to change a little bit. It’s something he’s aware of and he’s trying to hone down.’’

There are a lot of pieces to Bichette’s swing: alterations depending on the count, adjustments to optimize the swing path.

“Obviously he has a leg kick and he has bigger moves than most people,’’ says Martinez. “You can get caught up in other things that are probably not as important, but I’ve seen him in this position before. Every year he has at least a month like that. He always gets out of it, and he gets out of it pretty strong.’’

That hasn’t happened yet, though, and this is what Bichette means when he talks about returning to basics after discarding all the more complex modifications which have resulted in disjointed at-bats.

Hitting a ball travelling at nearly 100 m.p.h. with a slim piece of wood, in the blink of an eye to understand what a pitcher has thrown and react, is exquisitely hard. “The game’s not fair,’’ says Bichette. “It’s probably the most difficult just mentally on a day-to-day life basis sport that there is. It takes special people to deal with doing everything perfect and not getting the result. It takes discipline, it takes consistency to be the best.

“We’re deep enough into the season where, obviously, individually I haven’t been consistent enough or disciplined enough, because if I had been I would be playing to my level.’’

For this son of an all-star, imbued in baseball from the moment he could hold a bat, such consummate frustration is alien territory. There have been keen disappointments since he arrived in the majors, but nothing so individually and collectively misshapen. “It’s definitely different. To be honest, I’ve never lost in my entire life, never not met expectations, never been part of something like that. I have a lot to figure out. That’s where my mind is right now.’’

Evident to anyone watching closely as well is that Bichette hasn’t seemed himself, has looked out of sorts all season in his demeanour, unusually glum in the dugout and disengaged from even the celebratory moments. “That’s fair,’’ he acknowledges.

Everybody has stuff going on in their lives that affects their mental well-being. Maybe you’ve had a fight with your wife or the baby has kept you up all night. Without probing too intimately, it’s fairly well known that the Bichette family is estranged from Bo’s older brother Dante, who has repeatedly gone on social media to rip his parents. That isn’t a subject Bichette wishes to discuss. But this season has also seen his closest friend, Santiago Espinal, traded away for scraps and the departure of long-time teammate Cavan Biggio, with whom Bichette had been in career lockstep since the minors.

“It sucks to have friends that you’ve been with for a long time not be with you anymore. You build strong bonds and go through adversity, and you lean on each other for more things than just on the ball field. But it’s a business and everybody has to learn how to deal with things not going their way. I’m no different from anybody else.’’

Three of them — Bichette, Biggio, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. — were an emotional nexus for the team and a maturing continuum on a club for which much had been expected, its window of opportunity now possibly closing.

He’s not conceding anything, however.

“I’d love nothing more than to win a championship, especially with Vladdy. We’ve talked about it since we were 18 years old, about winning a championship together in Toronto.’’

He doesn’t sound like someone who wants out of a flailing organization, a year away from free agency. General manager Ross Atkins has been adamant that he has no interest in trading Bichette and a teardown rebuild by moving either Bichette or Guerrero is frankly absurd. They remain the underpinning of this franchise on a roster poorly constructed.

“I don’t want to make more headlines, but nothing would shock me,” the shortstop said.

But does Bichette, in his heart, want to re-sign and remain? Because he’s seen the team the front office has put on the field and can’t be happy with it.

“I would say that things are a little bit confusing at the moment.’’

Players play, management manages, or mismanages.

“Listen, at the end of the day I really have too much individually to be figuring out to be worrying about that. I know what I bring, I know what I’ve done for this organization for years.

“Like I said, there’s nothing I would like more than to win a championship with Vladdy in this organization. I don’t think anybody would be more disappointed if I couldn’t get that done and I was moved on because I didn’t produce. But at the same time, nothing would surprise me.

“I’ll reiterate that I really have to figure things out for myself right now.’’

Looking for Bo, inward and outward.

“I’ve been through struggles before. Maybe not to this degree, maybe not in the same way, but every time you overcome it — and I have no doubt that I will — it’s an incredible feeling. So I will continue to search for whatever is missing, and I can’t wait to have that opportunity to get back to myself.’’

In Wednesday evening’s game, shades of the old Bichette: connected for a double, brought home the opening run on a sacrifice fly and later came around to score before getting painfully drilled on the forearm with a pitch. He wasn’t even rewarded with a hit-batter base because the umpire ruled he’d swung — and struck out.

There’s no crying in baseball. But sometimes you want to pull out your hair.