The Jays land RHP Chris Bassitt!
The Blue Jays have shaken off the "afraid to spend" label for the fourth time in four winters, raising the floor of their rotation with a shrewd bit of business, and setting up more fun to come...
MLB’s second tier dominos are starting to fall now, and it turns out that your Toronto Blue Jays are actually not going to simply sit on their hands all winter. They’ve added right-hander Chris Bassitt, formerly of the A’s and Mets, on a three-year, $63 million deal.
His age is theoretically a concern — Bassitt turns 34 in February. The dollars are theoretically a concern. The fact that he declined New York’s qualifying offer last month is theoretically a concern. But considering the market, the Jays’ needs, their long-term financial outlook, and the qualities Bassitt brings to the table, I think this is a pretty danged nifty piece of business for ol’ Ross Atkins.
So let’s talk about it!
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Before we get too deep into Bassitt alone, a game.
Player A
2021: 29 starts, 23.2 K%, 7.3 BB%, 1.50 HR/9, 4.30 ERA, 4.43 FIP, 1.9 fWAR, 2.2 rWAR
2022: 32 starts, 20.7 K%, 4.4 BB%, 1.32 HR/9, 3.91 ERA, 3.94 FIP, 2.3 fWAR, 1.3 rWAR
Player B
2021: 29 starts, 22.3 K%, 8.4 BB%, 1.47 HR/9, 4.47 ERA, 4.57 FIP, 1.4 fWAR, 0.5 rWAR
2022: 29 starts, 20.3 K%, 6.9 BB%, 0.86 HR/9, 3.49 ERA, 3.65 FIP, 2.5 fWAR, 2.6 rWAR
Player C
2021: 27 starts, 25.0 K%, 6.1 BB%, 0.86 HR/9, 3.15 ERA, 3.34 FIP, 3.3 fWAR, 4.0 rWAR
2022: 30 starts, 22.4 K%, 6.6 BB%, 0.94 HR/9, 3.42 ERA, 3.66 FIP, 2.7 fWAR, 3.2 rWAR
Now, I don’t know about you, but if you told me that Player C got the least money and least term out of this group of free agent starting pitchers, I’d be pretty surprised. And yet here we are. Player A is Jameson Taillon (Cubs, four years, $68 million). Player B is Taijuan Walker (Phillies, four years, $72 million). Player C is Chris Bassitt (Blue Jays, three years, $63 million).
Bassitt strikes the most players out, has been more consistent at avoiding free passes, does the best job of keeping the ball in the ballpark, produces the best outcomes in terms of ERA, FIP, and WAR, and costs the least amount of money of the three. It’s a funny industry, isn’t it?
There are, of course, some pretty clear reasons for the differences here. Taillon just turned 31. Walker will be 30 until August. Bassitt turns 34 in February. You wouldn't expect pitchers in those different age brackets to get the same contracts. But, as long as their team is getting the better pitcher on a deal where you’re not terrified of the term, you wouldn't expect fans to care a whiff about that anyway.
Similarly, I don't think fans are going to get hung up on the qualifying offer issue here, even if it was clearly part of what drove the front offices in Chicago and Philadelphia to more heavily value Taillon and Walker. It's a not-insignificant penalty...
...but it's also a fairly abstract one. At least as compared to actually tying up more dollars and term, or trading away a known quantity who is already in the system. The Jays will have smaller bonus pools to work with in both the draft and the international market next year, and that will impact their ability to bring in talent. But it’s also… like… Shane Farrell and Andrew Tinnish’s problem?
I’m not saying that teams should necessarily throw caution to the wind when it comes to their draft budgets every year — though less caution and more wind would generally be a good strategy across the board in this sport — but particularly for the Blue Jays at this juncture, adding talent without subtracting from their farm system seems a pretty smart way to go. Dealing a catcher off of the big league roster, as they are all-but-expected to do, works the same way. And if by doing so it’s left them with more money to add more talent, even better.
We, of course, don’t know exactly where this leaves the Jays’ budget — we don’t even know what the stupid Kiermaier contract is yet! — but there would appear to still be a little more room to manoeuvre yet, even if the CBT threshold is going to be their limit. Which, as Mark Shapiro made clear last week, it might not!
Danny Jansen is projected to make $3.7 million, and moving him out for another piece would not likely add a whole lot to the bottom line. For example, Miami’s Pablo López is projected to make just $1.9 million more than Jano. Pittsburgh's Bryan Reynolds makes just $3.05 million more than Jansen. We can do this!
I don’t choose those names at random, either. An account that had the Jays on Bassitt earlier on Monday has now made the suggestion that they have turned their attention there.
Granted, I don’t understand why the Pirates would want one of the Jays’ catchers with Henry Davis, a catcher taken first overall in the 2021 draft, already in Double-A. Or why López would be the priority when clearly more outfield help is still needed. I’ve also been blocking accounts like this on sight since pretty much the days of Kevin Gray’s big “scoop” 11 years ago (look it up, kids!). But hey, when you’re right, you’re right.
Bigger kudos, in my book, go to Lewis, Jays Twitter’s top RHP.
Anyway! However the news broke, it has broken — as has a whole lot of the sense of dread that has crept into the psyche of Jays Nation lately. It finally feels like the offseason has begun, and there’s a real excitement for what they’re going to do next. More importantly, there’s a real belief that more needle-moving deals are still to come. Which… they always were! But still, it turns out a tremendously solid addition is a better way to get fans thinking good thoughts than trading away one of the most likable players on the team for a reliever, or signing on for way too many plate-appearances of Tapia with a glove.
And let’s talk a bit about that addition, shall we? That’s really what we’re here to do.
Bassitt is, uh, pretty good!
The numbers I quoted above obviously don’t tell the whole story, but there are plenty of other numbers that do.
Bassitt had similar outcomes in 2022 to previous years, but how he got there was a little bit different. He's a sinkerballer, but distinctly less of a sinker pitcher than he was before, particularly against right-handed batters. In that split his sinker usage dropped from 47% down to 39%, with his new-ish, sweeping slider picking up the slack, going from 5% in 2020 to 19% to 25%. He'll also mix in four-seamers (13%), cutters (8%), curves (11%), and the occasional changeup (4%). In other words, it's a deep arsenal, which helps keeps batters on their toes and in part offsets his slightly below average fastball velocity (93 mph).
It's the same story against lefties, but with different pitches. Lefties see less of the sinker (28%), but much more of the cutter (28%), with a big increase in curveball (17%) and slider (6%) usage coming in 2022, at the expense of the four-seamer (13%) and changeup (8%) — both of which had at times been his secondary pitch against them.
According to Eno Sarris of the Athletic, Bassitt’s curve was the best pitch in baseball in 2022 by Stuff+!!?!
The breaking ball uptick is particularly interesting for other reasons, too. For one, Ben Clemens of FanGraphs explains this about Bassitt’s slider:
When Bassitt isn’t throwing sinkers, he’s increasingly throwing sweeping sliders. He’d never really featured a slider before 2021, using it only intermittently. That changed starting in ’21; he threw it a quarter of the time to right-handed batters in ’22 and rarely to a lefty. That’s the best way to use such a pitch; it suppresses contact to same-handed batters and produces a raft of pop ups, making it a great way to neutralize the stadium he pitches in.
That’s especially important as he moves away from more pitcher-friendly confines (Citi Field and whatever the hell they’re calling the Oakland Coliseum these days) to less favourable ones.
Eno has other reasons to like the increase in breaking ball usage, too.
Still, it's on the sinker that he makes his hay, and Bassitt was particularly good at that in 2022, setting a career high for ground ball rate at 48.8% and producing run values that made it as good as sinkers come among starting pitchers.
Stroman’s name up there is an interesting one because, despite some very obvious differences (for one thing, Bassitt is listed as 6’5” tall and 217 pounds), you can see some vague similarities in both depth of arsenal and general, FIP-busting outcomes. In terms of actual ground ball rate, however, Bassitt is no mid-career Stroman. From 2016 to 2018, Stroman was producing ground ball rates above 60%. Bassitt’s rate in 2021 had been just 41.8%, which is more in line with his previous two years as well.
As with the pop-up-inducing slider, keeping that ground ball rate as high as it was in 2022 would be a smart idea. A reversion could be cause for a little bit of concern, given the move to the Rogers Centre (and the AL East in general), as well as the banning of the shift (and considering who will be playing shortstop for the Jays in 2023!). But another thing about Bassitt’s uptick in breaking ball usage that bodes well is that he’s already shown a real willingness to adapt.
Also boding well? Just the overall fit of the deal. It’s certainly not gone unnoticed that Bassitt’s three-year contract means that his money will be off the books at the same time as Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette will be reaching free agency — or, more optimistically, having their massive contract extensions kick in. The fit goes deeper than that, though. Clemens put this especially well in his piece at FanGraphs, I thought. Citing the floor-raising qualities of adding a solid mid-rotation guy who, among other things, won’t be too upset if José Berríos bounces back and becomes the Jays’ true number three, he writes:
The more things you need to go right for your team to win a championship, the more you should be making moves that increase volatility. Think the Rangers with deGrom; they weren’t a playoff team last year and probably wouldn’t be if they added Bassitt, but a peak deGrom season would put them squarely in the playoff mix. The Jays are the opposite of that. The main thing they need to do to remain in the playoff mix is not have their pitching staff implode. Getting the safest bet on the market reduces their volatility.
Looking through that same prism probably makes the Kevin Kiermaier deal look a bit better too, I should add. Fortunately we’re not talking about him right now!
The biggest reason why Bassitt can be a stabilizing force for the Jays is, of course, his durability. That’s not always a feature of pitchers in their mid-30s, but Bassitt seems rather unique in that regard. Since he returned from Tommy John surgery that forced him to miss all of 2017, Bassitt has been on the injured list just three times. Once for a right leg contusion in 2019. Once, in August of 2021, due to a facial fracture after he was hit by a 100 mph comebacker in a very scary incident while visiting the White Sox (yes, he was that guy!). And once last year, when he landed on the COVID-IL for a brief time in early July.
Obviously that doesn’t mean that anyone should be going into these next three years with no concerns. This is the arm of an MLB pitcher, after all. But these also aren’t Hyun Jin Ryu-level worries — a signing that, I think it’s worth noting, was another instance of the Jays abiding Clemens’ volatility maxim.
There isn’t a ton of upside here, but there doesn’t have to be. Durability, results, financial fit, future flexibility. Bassitt checks so many of the key boxes for this team that it’s a wonder he wasn’t talked about more often before this.
Alone he doesn’t make this winter a win for Ross Atkins and the Blue Jays. But he certainly can be a massive piece toward that end. What matters now is what comes next.
A cheap deal with a fifth starter with upside would make some sense — Corey Kluber, perhaps, suggests BK. Michael Conforto feels like a much better outcome today than it would have before this. And, of course, the catching market is really starting to heat up.
Stay tuned!
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I like!
This is a great signing! I love how this one came seemingly out of the blue. One more starter now please!