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A year ago today, the Blue Jays signed Chris Bassitt
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Photo credit: © John E. Sokolowski-USA TODAY Sports
Ryley Delaney
Dec 16, 2023, 12:00 ESTUpdated: Dec 16, 2023, 20:41 EST
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A year ago, the Blue Jays did something.
On December 16, 2022, the Blue Jays signed Chris Bassitt to a three-year deal, worth $63 million, or $21 million a season.
In his first season with the Jays, the 34-year-old had a 3.60 ERA and a 4.28 FIP in 200 innings pitched, along with a 22.5 K% and a 7.1 BB%. We can all consider this a good season, but his ERA and FIP were the worst since 2019 with the Oakland Athletics, where he had a 3.81 ERA and 4.40 FIP in 144 innings pitched.
Still, the “elevated” ERA (even though it’s still good) doesn’t include the fact that he ate innings like the cookie monster eats cookies. His 200 innings ranked as the fifth-most in the league, behind Logan Webb’s 216, Zac Gallen’s 210, Gerrit Coles’ 209, and Miles Mikolas’ 201.1.
Bassitt’s signing is a long string of major moves over the past four off-seasons. In the 2019-20 off-season, they signed Hyun Jin Ryu to a four-year, $80 million deal. A season later, they signed George Springer to a six-year, $150 million deal. In the 2021-22 off-season, they signed ace Kevin Guasman to a five-year, $110 million deal, and re-signed JosĂ© BerrĂ­os to a seven-year, $131 million deal. Bassitt, of course, only signed to a three-year, $63 million deal, but the Blue Jays also made two major trades.
It goes to show you how slow the baseball off-season is. The 2022 Winter Meetings started on December 4, 2022 and ran through December 7, 2022. Despite the mingling of free agents, general managers, player agents, and journalists, the Blue Jays made no moves, and hadn’t since the Teoscar Hernández trade in the middle of November.
Their first signing of the off-season came five days after the meetings wrapped up, when they signed Kevin Kiermaier. However, that didn’t become official until December 15, 2022, a day before Bassitt’s signing.
There was no Hernández trade to keep us fans intrigued early in the 2023-24 off-season, but of course there was the whole Shohei Ohtani saga throughout the early part of this month. Of course, he signed a 10-year, $700 million deal, the largest in sport’s history. But it’s been a month and half since the season ended, so how do the Jays get better?
They’re no doubt working the phones, and have recently been linked to top free agents Cody Bellinger and Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Both players would make the team better, and signing Yamamoto would allow them to move a starting pitcher from their surplus of pitching, perhaps even Bassitt (although it likely wouldn’t be him).
Either way, it’ll only be a matter of time before the Blue Jays do something. Whether that be signing a top free agent (as they’ve done for the past four off-seasons), or making a major deal like they did twice in the 2022-23 off-season remains to be seen. It’ll be an exciting off-season
 once stuff picks up.
As always, you can follow me on Twitter, Instagram, and Threads @Brennan_L_D.

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