Bassitt's patented grittiness helped him finish off a stellar May

This story was excerpted from Keegan Matheson’s Blue Jays Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

CHICAGO -- If Chris Bassitt’s right arm fell off on the way to the ballpark, it wouldn’t matter. He’d be a six-pitch lefty by the time the bus pulled into the parking lot.

When Bassitt met with the media after throwing five scoreless innings in the 5-1 win over the White Sox on Monday, he couldn’t move his neck. He turned his whole body, side to side, fielding questions after delivering for the Blue Jays on a day they feared he wouldn’t be able to pitch at all.

“I couldn’t look towards home plate with my normal mechanics,” Bassitt said. “I give [Danny Jansen] Jano a ton of credit because we had to change basically everything, from where to throw pitches to where to set up. We had to figure it out really fast.”

Looking at home plate seems important.

Instead, Bassitt pitched “open.” He faced home plate more directly with his body instead of his typical setup, where his belt buckle is facing third but his head is turned to the left, looking in at his catcher. Even for a pitcher whose mound mannerisms often “look like he’s been sent off to war,” as manager John Schneider once put it, Bassitt looked incredibly uncomfortable.

“I kind of felt like I was throwing like [Kevin] Gausman a bit, in the aspect of how open I was,” Bassitt said, “but I had to stay open. That was the problem. I felt like I was never able to truly drive the ball. I’ll be honest with you, I got lucky. A lot of pitches, I just got lucky. I think the awkwardness of it all kind of threw them off a little bit.”

That’s Bassitt, honest and unvarnished.

With the Blue Jays coming off a heartbreaking 14-11 loss on Sunday to end an ugly series in Detroit, Bassitt wasn’t so much focused on the win-loss record, but on his bullpen. Even as he couldn’t move his neck on a big league mound, the veteran righty’s biggest worry was the workload on his relievers. They were banged up, carrying a heavy load.

There was nothing fancy about any of this. There’s no analytics handbook for a stiff neck. This was an old-school moment and Bassitt, a true throwback in so many ways, just gutted it out.

“Changing mechanics is probably a really bad idea,” Bassitt said. “But I just told myself to throttle down, don’t try to overthrow and just be comfortable. As much as I possibly could, I had to be comfortable. I’m sure Twitter is going to say that my velocities were down and stuff like that, but overall, I would say just to not overthrow. Just pitch. Just throw strikes and pitch. Luckily I’m a pitcher, not a thrower, so I can kind of manipulate things and make it work.”

We’ve seen this over and over again with Bassitt.

Early in 2023, Bassitt pitched through a sinus infection that was giving him extreme headaches whenever his heart rate rose, which tends to happen when you’re performing in front of 35,000 people. He tried to “pitch like a zombie,” trudging around the mound like a man on the verge of falling asleep. He even took a couple of automatic balls to get a fresh pitch clock and catch his breath. That day, like Monday, was something so few pitchers could pull off.

“He’s a little quirky,” Schneider said, in a wonderful understatement. “Whether it’s waiting through a rain delay, not being able to turn his neck, a sinus infection, he’s been through it all. What helps him is that he’s not out there trying to overthrow, even when he’s feeling great. Yesterday came down to making pitches, but his overall personality is what makes him very, very agile in times like that.”

Cranky neck aside, it really feels like Bassitt is back. He had such an uneven start to the season, but he posted a 2.40 ERA in his five starts in May. That dragged his ERA on the season down to 4.03.

Bassitt has been blunt in his assessments of the Blue Jays this year, at times taking some of the blame onto the shoulders of the rotation and at other times plainly expressing the frustrations they’re all feeling. This rotation, like Bassitt, had a tough start, but they’re not the problem.

Now 35 years old and coming off his first career 200-inning season, this surely isn’t the last ache Bassitt will need to work through, but he’ll figure it out. He always does.