It wasn’t absolutely imperative for the New York Mets to address their rotation further after adding future Hall of Famer Max Scherzer ahead of the lockout.
Tylor Megill, David Peterson, Trevor Williams, Jordan Yamamoto, and eventually Joey Lucchesi are more than competent depth arms to file in behind Jacob deGrom, Scherzer, Taijuan Walker, and Carlos Carrasco.
Though, if this team does indeed have championship aspirations, reinforcing their starting five with an All-Star is never a bad idea.
Late Saturday, Mets general manager Billy Eppler sent two minor league pitchers — J.T. Ginn and Adam Oller — to the Athletics in exchange for Oakland’s 33-year-old right-hander and 2021 American League All-Star Chris Bassitt. Yup, that’ll work.
Ginn, 22, New York’s second-round draft pick in 2020, was the fifth-ranked prospect in the Mets system. Oller, 27, was selected from the Giants’ system in the 2019 minor league Rule 5 Draft and made tremendous strides with Double-A Binghamton and Triple-A Syracuse in 2021. Both will be missed.
But when a team — a contending one, at that — is presented with the opportunity to add an above-average piece to their puzzle in exchange for varying degrees of potential, it’s usually a move that’s gotta be made. In this case, most definitely.
Bassitt has front-of-the-rotation stuff (3.15 ERA/3.34 FIP over 27 starts in 2021; 157.1 IP), mixing up six different pitches and getting effective results from all of them.
His sinker (.324 wOBA in 2021) leads the way with the four-seam (.225 wOBA, 26% whiff rate), cutter (.367 wOBA, 22% whiff), changeup (.242 wOBA), slider (.222 wOBA, 38% whiff rate), and curve (also 38% whiff) filling things out.
Last season, Bassitt’s 9.10 strikeouts per nine innings (29th), 2.23 walks per nine (23rd), 0.86 homers per nine (11th), and 3.3 fWAR (27th) were all top-30 among MLB hurlers with at least 150 innings pitched. His 1.06 WHIP was good for 10th among the same group.
He limits hard contact terrifically (27.6% hard-hit rate last season, 11th in MLB, min. 150 IP), throws strikes consistently (28.1% called strike-and-whiff rate, 28th), and had the 17th-highest flyball rate (38.3%) with the fifth-lowest HR/FB rate (9.2%) in the majors.
And this isn’t a new development. Since 2018, Bassitt’s 3.23 ERA is 13th among pitchers with at least 350 innings pitched over that span.
Toss in the fact that he’s also as tough as nails — Oh, right; we forgot to mention that Bassitt was struck in the face by a 100.1 MPH line drive off the bat of Brian Goodwin at Chicago last August. He missed just five weeks after undergoing surgery to repair facial fractures, allowing an earned run over 6.1 innings (two appearances) upon his return — and the Mets look to have gotten themselves an absolute stud.
Big things happening with potentially more to come. Onward.
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