Bassitt helps flip narrative for Blue Jays with well-executed outing vs. Orioles

TORONTO — There was a roughly 24-hour span filled with doom and gloom for the Toronto Blue Jays but then Chris Bassitt took the mound Sunday afternoon and changed that.

First off, the lead up. On Saturday, right-hander Max Scherzer exited his first start for the Blue Jays after three innings due to right lat soreness. The future Hall-of-Famer sounded dejected following the team’s loss and, on Sunday morning, was placed on the 15-day injured list due to the ongoing issues caused by his right thumb.

That brought all kinds of questions about Scherzer’s future and about the Blue Jays' pitching depth.

However, narratives can change quickly in baseball and the Blue Jays managed to stave off more grey clouds with their spirited 3-1 win over the Baltimore Orioles on Sunday in front of 21,069 at Rogers Centre.

The Blue Jays executed well in many areas, but it all started with Bassitt. The right-hander was hit hard and often by the Orioles and put runners on base in each of his six innings, yet he bared down and made pitches when it mattered.

“He has a really good way about him to slow the situation down,” said Blue Jays manager John Schneider. “His rhythm and cadence were really good throughout the day. And, it's a really tough lineup to navigate.”

Undoubtedly, the at-bat of the game came in the fifth inning, when Bassitt faced Cedric Mullins with two on and two out as the Blue Jays were clinging to a one-run lead.

Bassitt started off with a ball before getting two strikes on the left-handed hitter. Mullins then fouled off a four-seamer and took two balls to work the count full.

That’s when things got really fun.

Bassitt threw a curveball down in the zone and Mullins fouled it off. He followed with a splitter well outside that Mullins also fouled. Finally, on the ninth pitch of the plate appearance, Bassitt threw a high 91.5 mph cutter that induced a weak swing and miss from Mullins to end the drama.

“That was a turning point in the game,” said Schneider.

The entire sequence was a nice encapsulation of the pitcher, as he threw nearly his entire repertoire at Mullins — cutter, curveball, four-seamer, sinker and splitter. And, when it all ended, Bassitt let out an emphatic roar before calming himself and walking back to the dugout.

Bassitt, though, lamented the fact that the at-bat prevented him from achieving his goal of pitching later into the game to preserve the Blue Jays’ bullpen.

“The biggest part of it is just like, get it over with,” Bassitt said. “I was hoping to go seven or eight today and I was trying to be really efficient and throw pitches that I knew were going to get hit. Just hoping to get outs.”

In total, Bassitt allowed one run on eight hits over six innings, walking two and striking out seven. Importantly, he kept the Orioles inside the park, as this was the first time in this four-game set that the club didn’t hit a home run. The right-hander relied mostly on his sinker but worked in seven other pitches, generating a total of 12 whiffs.

Bassitt was happy with his splitter, which he used 11 times against the left-handed hitters in the Orioles lineup. He made the pitch a priority during spring training and said its addition would complicate the game plans of opposing hitters. While he did allow two hits off it, Bassitt said he expects it to get better with more usage.

Sunday’s win, which allowed the Blue Jays to split the season-opening series with the Orioles, 2-2, featured plenty of other positives from the home side.

There was a nice piece of hitting from George Springer in the first inning to drive in two runs with an opposite-field single and the right fielder added a key defensive play in the third, sliding to cut off a ball before it reached the right-field wall, saving a run in the process.

“That play changed the momentum a little bit for us,” said Schneider. “That's Georgie — no matter what he's doing offensively, he's always on on defence, which is such a credit to him. That’s just him busting his ass getting over.”

And how about Tyler Heineman’s seventh-inning home run — and subsequent bat-flip — that gave the Blue Jays a needed insurance run?

“He's been working on it all winter,” joked Schneider. “He was very excited to put the (home run) jacket on.”

It was just the second homer of Heineman’s career. The backup catcher’s first came on Sept. 26, 2019, during his sixth at-bat in the majors.

“I got a lot of crap from my friends saying that (they) think I had one of the highest streaks of games without a homer in the big leagues,” Heineman said with a smile, before he was asked about his post-homer celebration.

“I'm going to go with the fact that I had a lot of pine tar on my hand and it got stuck,” he quipped. “To be honest, I don't really remember doing it until I just saw it. I was like, ‘Yeah, it was a little too big.’ So, I apologize if that offended anybody for sure because that was not intended.”

Also of note on Sunday was the tidy work from the Blue Jays' bullpen, including a scoreless eighth inning from Yariel Rodriguez and closer Jeff Hoffman recording his first save with the club.

Big picture, though, the concerns about Scherzer and the pitching depth aren’t going anywhere. Nonetheless, Bassitt believes it’s a storm the Blue Jays rotation can weather.

The right-hander said he intentionally stretched himself out toward the end of spring training in order to be able to open the campaign with a high pitch count. He tossed 106 pitches on Sunday, a number he reached only twice last season.

“Obviously, we knew Max's situation that he was going to be limited for at least the start of the year,” said Bassitt. “So, I had to be built up to 100 pitches, so to speak, in spring to take the workload off the bullpen.”

The right-hander pointed out that he and his rotation mates Kevin Gausman and Jose Berrios have been in situations like this in the past where they’ve had to make up for the absence of another starter. Notably, the group went to a four-man rotation for a period in 2023 when Alek Manoah was struggling.

“To us, it's not a big deal,” said Bassitt, adding that the team needs Scherzer at 100 per cent. “He doesn't need to be battling stuff. We know that. And we can make up for it. So, whenever he can come back and help us out, that's when we need him. But he doesn't need to be going out there just to go out there. He brings plenty to the team just by being in the dugout."

“We need Max to be Max,” he added. “I think (Gausman), Berrios, me and Bowden (Francis) have all done a really good job of getting ready for this. And now, it's just let's rock and roll.”