Killer B’s: Bichette, Bassitt lead Blue Jays to dramatic win over Angels

ANAHEIM, Calif. – Trouble struck Chris Bassitt before he’d even thrown his first pitch against the Los Angeles Angels. In the dugout before taking the mound, he’d fidgeted with his PitchCom transmitter and unknowingly switched modes on the device, discovering the issue on the mound when he punched the call in to catcher Alejandro Kirk and the wrong pitch came up. As he tried to figure out the issue, he was called for a pitch-clock violation that left him down a ball to Taylor Ward. The right-hander then told Kirk to call the game instead, the timer counted down toward a second automatic ball and eventually manager John Schneider had to charge out so Bassitt could change the transmitter, which he didn’t bother with until the second inning.

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Once up and running, the violation proved costly when Ward worked a full-count walk and on the next pitch, Bassitt missed middle-middle with an 89.9-m.p.h. fastball that was supposed to be down and in. Mike Trout cranked it 441 feet at 112.3 m.p.h. off a truck in left-centre field.

Big yikes, especially after the thumping he took in his Toronto Blue Jays debut last weekend. “Obviously, I hold myself to a lot higher standard than what I’ve portrayed over the first four innings of my career here,” he said afterwards.

Still, this time Bassitt kept his outing on the rails, recovering to allow only one more run, an unearned one at that, over what finished as six crafty innings of work. That kept the margin close enough for the Blue Jays to rally, which they did on a Bo Bichette three-run homer in the seventh inning that provided the difference in a 4-3 victory Friday night.

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“That can’t happen in the first,” Bassitt said of his PitchCom mishap. “I’m really grateful to be a part of this team. I’m really happy with the fight from the offence and obviously the defence behind me that (the tech issue) didn’t cost us. If I’d be sitting here and we had lost, that’d be a whole different situation and I’d be pretty mad, but I’m happy about (the win).”

Bichette’s second homer of the season, on a down-and-in curveball from reliever Jimmy Herget, erased a 3-1 deficit and stunned a crowd of 44,375 at the Angels’ home opener. The 415-foot drive to left-centre came after a leadoff Santiago Espinal single and two-out George Springer base hit through the 3-4 hole.

“You just look for the ball in a certain spot,” Bichette said of his approach against Herget’s funky delivery. “He’s got a lot sink on his fastball, his slider and curveball are good, so you just try to get the ball up.”

The homer helped mask some sloppy play earlier in the game.

In the top of the fourth, the Blue Jays cut into a 2-0 deficit on Espinal’s run-scoring fielder’s choice but then ran themselves out of the inning on a botched delayed double steal, as Matt Chapman broke late from third base and was eventually thrown out at home.

Then, in the bottom half, a Kirk throwing error on a Gio Urshela steal attempt at second helped move the infielder to third base and eventually set up a David Fletcher safety squeeze that put the Angels back up 3-1. A good throw to second would likely have had Urshela easily.

Regardless, Bassitt helped keep a lid on the Angels, shaking off the nine-run, four-homer, 3.1-inning beatdown he took from the St. Louis Cardinals in his Toronto debut. He was puzzled after that game, unsure how the NL Central champions hit lasers off six different offerings, and planned to dig into his outing, but the Blue Jays also didn’t want to dig too far into a start that “was weird in a variety of different ways,” said Schneider.

“He’s a really intelligent guy and he’s got a really good process about him, so making a few adjustments here and there,” he added. “A lot of it comes down to execution, as well when you look back at that game. Side session was good. We’re confident with that.”

Of note is that against the Cardinals, his curveball came out of a distinctly higher release point than his other pitches.

On Friday, his release points were tighter, creating a more consistent tunel which helped keep the Angels off balance and suppressed hard contact.

While Trout’s homer was an absolute rocket, the average exit velocity off Bassitt was 83.1 m.p.h. and he generated nine swinging strikes, compared to four against the Cardinals. Yet in spite of the improved results, the 34-year-old said, “I still am not right,” in his mechanics and that was “for sure” contributing to an across-the-board velocity dip he’s been fighting through.

“If I’m not sitting on my back leg right, if I’m directionally falling off more than I should, my velo will be down a tick or two,” he added.

He also needed to work around traffic as he walked five, but spread them out well enough that save for Urshela in the fourth, they didn’t hurt him. And Bassitt finished the outing with his best frame, sandwiching strikeouts of Brandon Drury and Logan O’Hoppe around an Urshela groundout, leaving him “happy we won tonight, and that’s it.”

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“Analytically, people see the movement’s right, the velo’s right, but then you go and see film and it’s a yanked two-seamer rather than you driving it,” said Bassitt. “My direction is a work in progress. And you can’t replicate a big-league stadium. That’s the biggest issue for me. Spring training is great, but I mean, we don’t face (Shohei) Ohtani in spring training, we’re not facing Trout in spring training. I know mechanically, I’ll be good, hopefully in the next start, but we’re still working on that.”

Relievers Yimi Garcia, Erik Swanson and Jordan Romano handled things the rest of the way to lock down a fourth straight win. Swanson smartly worked around an Ohtani leadoff double in the eighth, getting flyouts from Hunter Renfroe, Jake Lamb and Drury to hold the lead.

“Not the most ideal start, kind of back-and-forth with Shohei there … he went down and got that pitch, left it a little bit over the plate,” said Swanson. “When he’s on second there, just trying to strand him, doing everything I can. Got lucky on a couple of pitches. Sometimes you need that.”

He got it, helping make for an end to the night much better than the start, for both Bassitt and the Blue Jays

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