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Chris Bassitt gets frank about the state of the Blue Jays
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Photo credit: Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports
Ian Hunter
Aug 19, 2024, 18:00 EDTUpdated: Aug 19, 2024, 18:14 EDT
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If any member of the Blue Jays media needs a juicy quote to get eyeballs on their story, surely, they head straight for Chris Bassitt’s locker. In his year-and-a-half as a Blue Jay, Bassitt has proven he’s fairly unfiltered and isn’t afraid to tell it like it is.
That makes him the perfect podcast quest because the Blue Jays veteran starter will surely say something that will get people talking. Case in point, Bassitt’s latest appearance on The Chris Rose Rotation.
The entire episode below is worth a watch, but here are some of the most notable quotes from Bassitt:
“Everybody has issues. It’s just that I don’t want to be one of the guys who talks about the team’s issues publicly. I see players do it, and I don’t want to identify the problems because some of the problems I don’t think are fixable.”
In my eyes, this is the most interesting tidbit uttered by Bassitt. One can only ponder what he means when he says “some of the problems I don’t think are fixable”, but I think he’s either alluding to the lack of talent on the big league roster or the lack of quality depth in the minor leagues.
Even if that’s the case, wouldn’t the big league roster still be “fixable” by augmenting with free agent signings and trades this offseason? Maybe he’s hinting at some systemic failures from the top-down, but everyone would love more insight about what Bassitt is referring to.
“The one thing I’ll say about the Blue Jays for this year is I think we put $700 million into Shohei Ohtani’s basket and didn’t get him. That was the reality. I think the pivot was we really didn’t have a pivot to an elite-elite-elite player.
This has been the dirty little secret about the Blue Jays since “Ohtani Watch” crashed and burned last December; they didn’t have a Plan B, or at least, they weren’t successful in executing the fallback plan in case they didn’t land Ohtani.
Instead, the Blue Jays inked Justin Turner, Isiah Kiner-Falefa and re-signed Kevin Kiermaier. That’s a hell of a drop-off from missing out on the most exciting player in MLB. In all fairness, there weren’t many marquee names in free agency after Ohtani that were worth the squeeze, but smart organizations find a way to get better even if they don’t get their number one guy.
“In today’s baseball, this is the reality of the landscape, is that you need three or four superstars. You look at all the really, really, really good teams, they’re not doing it with one superstar. They’re legit doing it with three or four superstars. That’s just the nature of this game now.
“The way that pitching is, the way that bullpens are set up, if you have one hitter or two hitters in your lineup, you literally cannot be good, I don’t think. No matter how great the player is, I don’t think that’s possible. We have to get more hitting to protect Vladdy, and the pitching has to be a lot better.”
Again, this might have been a poke at the front office for not reinforcing the starting lineup with more high-end players. Instead, the Blue Jays were banking on internal improvements from many of their key players, and that didn’t happen.
If the Blue Jays expected Bo Bichette and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to put this team on their back, as Bassitt said, it wouldn’t have been enough talent to get this team back to the playoffs.
“I have been around some really, really good players, and I have never seen anyone like Vladdy. Everyone talks about 2021 Vladdy, the numbers that he had, his MVP season. I didn’t really see it a lot last year, and then this year flipped and the first month or so I was like: ‘I don’t see 2021 Vladdy’.
“Then all of a sudden there was a lightbulb that went off — to say mechanical changes or whatever he may have done — and then I was like: ‘This is the best hitter on the planet.’
“I don’t want to speak for him on this, but I think Vladdy wants to be a Blue Jays for the rest of his career. I don’t think he wants to leave.”
This is the quote that had everybody talking, predominantly about how Bassitt was an advocate for Guerrero signing a huge contract extension. Of course, a player would never outright say they want to test free agency (unless they’re a Scott Boras client), but it’s very interesting that even Bassitt is pulling for Vladdy to be a Blue Jay for life.
It’s also quite a compliment to Guerrero that Bassitt looks up to him as one of the premiere hitters in the game. The 35-year-old has played alongside plenty of talented players over his 10-year career, but none as impressive as Vladdy.
“There was a lot of articles and there was a lot of people saying that I was leaving or I should be leaving, but they told me I wasn’t leaving. I never thought I was leaving. I knew for a while; we had a number of people that had meetings and were told: ‘Hey, you’re not getting traded.'”
What articles, *cough cough*, might Mr. Bassitt be talking about? I’m not sure what the front office’s trade deadline protocol is, but it’s interesting how the Blue Jays reassured Bassitt he was not on the trading block this past deadline.
I was always under the impression that you never promise players anything, but it shows how 2024 was a write-off for the Blue Jays, but they still wanted to reload and keep any key players on the roster for another run in 2025 and beyond.

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