The Jays Opt for Certainty With Chris Bassitt

When I read today’s ZiPS projections for the Blue Jays, I was struck by one clear weakness: starting pitching depth. The team boasts an impressive lineup across the board, with Lourdes Gurriel Jr. the closest thing to a weak spot. Toronto also has two borderline aces in Alek Manoah and Kevin Gausman.

That sounds great, but the fourth and fifth starters are projected for a combined 1.7 WAR, which is wildly uninspiring. That hardly seems like a smart plan for a presumptive playoff team, but the Jays are no dummies. Those projections are now outdated — sorry Dan! — because Chris Bassitt is headed north on a three-year, $63 million deal, as Jeff Passan first reported.

Bassitt isn’t the best pitcher to reach free agency this season, but he’s squarely in the top tier. I ranked him 14th among the top 50 free agents this offseason, with only four pitchers ahead of him. Rational observers could certainly differ on that; he’s at the head of a large pack of starters who I think will deliver roughly equivalent value over the next few years. But the general point holds: he’s the kind of pitcher that you probably don’t want starting your first game of the playoffs but that you’d be ecstatic to have as a third starter.

On the Jays, it’s at least conceivable that Bassitt will be their fourth starter. In addition to Manoah and Gausman, they have a presumptive ace who lost his way in 2022: José Berríos. He was downright awful last year, with a 5.23 ERA and ugly peripherals — easily his worst season as a professional. And he played his way out of the projected playoff rotation; Toronto’s series with Seattle only lasted two games, but Ross Stripling was slated to start the third game if necessary.

That laid out the type of pitcher the Jays were looking for pretty cleanly, in my eyes. They needed to get someone who could start the third game of a playoff series, but they’d ideally get someone who wasn’t such an established top-of-rotation guy that they’d be annoyed if Berríos bounces back to his previous peak, which would lock him in as the third starter. Conveniently, that’s close to what Bassitt’s role was on the Mets last year; when Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer were both healthy, he was a co-no. 3 with Carlos Carrasco and Taijuan Walker.

The role makes sense. That leaves one clear question for Toronto: will Bassitt continue to deliver the same quality innings that he has for the past three years? By ERA-, he’s the 11th-best pitcher in baseball since the start of the 2020 season, with an ERA 21% below average. He’s still great by both FIP- and xFIP-, though not as good. That makes sense; Bassitt has made a living inducing weak contact over the years, as Justin Choi noted in our free agency roundup. And while those statistics I quoted are park-adjusted, the stadiums he’s called home probably have something to do with his excellence. He’s always going to allow a ton of balls in play, meaningfully more than the average pitcher. He doesn’t have huge strikeout stuff, but he does have pinpoint command, and he’s walked fewer than 7% of opposing batters in each of the last three years. That means that the size of his home park matters more than for your average pitcher; he takes the park out of the equation in fewer plate appearances than that average pitcher.

Citi Field and the Oakland Coliseum are 25th and 28th out of 30 venues, respectively, in wOBA on contact per Statcast. They get to it different ways — Oakland thanks to foul territory and spacious fences, Citi thanks to mysterious exit velocity suppression that limits all hits — but the common thread is that balls in play turn into bad outcomes infrequently at both. The Rogers Centre isn’t a bandbox, but it’s a neutral park, and actually a good place to hit homers. That, plus Toronto’s newly excellent infield defense, means Bassitt needs to keep the ball on the ground. Luckily, he has the tools to do just that, and posted the highest GB/FB ratio of his career. He’s sinker-first, and while he uses a four-seamer, the mix tilts further in favor of his sinker every year.

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.

Put that all together, and I think Bassitt is a good bet to deliver above-average innings for the next few years. He’s also fairly durable, at least as modern pitchers go: 20th in innings pitched over the last three years and 25th over the last four. In my eyes, that makes him an above-average option. ZiPS concurs:

I think this signing makes a ton of sense for Toronto. As I mentioned at the top, the team already has a solid offensive core and good top-end pitching. The easiest way to fall short is due to the back end of the rotation, particularly if one of the top pitchers suffers an injury. Bassitt might not offer the highest ceiling of any pitcher in his general tier, but he’s both durable and reliable.

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.

The average annual value of the deal is right in line with the way teams are valuing pitchers in free agency this year. The deal came in higher than both mine and the crowd’s estimates, but every deal has so far, driven by increasing league revenues and overall inflation. Heck, even at 2021 rates, the 7.2 WAR that ZiPS projects for Bassitt would fetch a contract approaching $60 million. This year’s stars at last year’s prices? That’s a deal anyone would take; have you tried to buy a gallon of milk recently?

As an added benefit, a three-year deal lines up perfectly with Toronto’s existing timeline. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette will be free agents after the 2025 season, just like Bassitt. Alejandro Kirk, George Springer, and Gausman will reach free agency the year after that. The window is, roughly speaking, the next three years. Bassitt makes the Jays better for those years and also gives them flexibility in 2026 should plans change. If they retain Guerrero and Bichette, great! They can sign another free-agent pitcher or re-up with Bassitt if that suits both sides. If they’re retooling, he’ll be off the books. Making contracts line up to maximize flexibility is an underrated aspect of front office work, but it’s a meaningful tailwind to the team’s long-term fortunes.

Is this the most exciting free-agent deal you’ll see this offseason? No. Is it the most impactful? Also no. But in terms of matching a player to a team, this deal is Goldilocks-esque. That doesn’t mean Bassitt is a sure thing, or that he’s impervious to injury. Nothing is certain in baseball. This, though, is about as close as it gets: a durable and consistent pitcher joining a team in need of durability and consistency, and at a market rate to boot.