Bassitt shuts down Astros as Blue Jays bounce back for win

HOUSTON – The signs John Schneider and the Toronto Blue Jays look for to know that Chris Bassitt is right are pretty straightforward.

“Stuff being where it has been with velo, feel for his curveball, landing it early and late and just executing,” the manager explained. “The first outing, kind of an outlier for what he is. The last couple have been more so what his track record has been to where you can bank on a pretty high pitch count, you can bank on him competing and knowing when to be in the zone, knowing when to be out of the zone, things like that. I think he matches up well against this lineup, just because of the unpredictability. So more of what he's been doing.”

Bassitt delivered on all of that in a 4-2 victory Tuesday night as he cleverly carved up the Houston Astros over 6.1 shutout innings, using a seven-pitch mix to pin down the defending World Series champions. With his velocity up a tick across the board, ability to spot a sinker that set up everything else he did and curveball generating four whiffs on eight swings, it was a pitching masterclass, underlining the aberration his Blue Jays debut was, while also further locking in his delivery.

“I feel really good with that,” said Bassitt. “The biggest issue that I had early was that we made an adjustment where I really wanted to go towards the middle of the mound rather than, for the last five or six years, I've been completely on the first base side. So it took a little bit to get used to the lanes of these pitches that are going to get thrown to these new locations. But it's opened up the slider for me so much better than I've ever had. I knew it was an adjustment that would really benefit me in the long run. But obviously getting used to it, there were some hiccups along the way.”

Not Tuesday, when he was backed by home runs from Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Matt Chapman in the fourth and RBI singles by Santiago Espinal and Bo Bichette in the fifth – all taken to the opposite field off Jose Urquidy.

The sparse offence came in handy during a nervous eighth, when RBI singles by Yordan Alvarez and Kyle Tucker off fellow lefty Tim Mayza ate into a 4-0 lead and Jordan Romano had to be called in to quell the rally and quiet a crowd of 32,602.

Romano then came back out for the ninth to collect his first four-out save of the season and his seventh overall, needing just 15 pitches in his first outing since taking a line drive off the ribs Saturday closing out the Tampa Bay Rays. 

"The ribs are a complete non-issue. Even (Monday) I could have thrown. It was a little sore right after, the next day, but the last two days have been fine,” said Romano. “I felt good. I felt strong.”

So, too, did Bassitt, who since allowing a two-run homer to Mike Trout in the first inning of his second start, has given up just three runs in 16.1 frames.

Against the Astros, he didn’t allow a baserunner until Alvarez’s 10-pitch walk in the fourth and a hit until Jose Abreu followed with a single. In a jam for the first time, he started Tucker with an up-and-away cutter for strike one before getting a groundball to short on a change at the outside corner.

That locked up a crucial shutdown inning after the right-field rockets by Guerrero and Chapman and allowed the Blue Jays to open things up in the fifth, when clever hitting and baserunning produced another two runs. 

“Definitely it makes our team really tough,” Chapman said of the way the Blue Jays used the right side of the field. “Throughout the course of history, Miggy (Cabrera), all these really good hitters, they use the whole field, especially in situations like that, because probably with runners on base, you're going to get pitched tough and you're not always going to get that pitch to drive out of the ballpark. You've got to be able to find a way to be productive and when you use the whole field, I feel like that really helps.”

Bassitt went three-up, three-down in the bottom half and then worked around a two-out double by Alex Bregman in the sixth, getting the ever-dangerous Alvarez on a fly ball to left deftly chased down by Whit Merrifield.

The turn to stability by Bassitt is a well-timed one amid instability elsewhere in the Blue Jays rotation, and coming off consecutive rough outings by Alek Manoah and Kevin Gausman. Dependability is his calling card and he delivered against the Astros.

“Being able to manipulate the ball and throw basically anything at any count, keeping them in between, that's kind of him,” said Schneider. “He's thinking through every pitch. It's pretty unique to hear him talk about how he's working his game. That's the Chris we signed up for.”