{"id":469471,"date":"2026-02-12T04:42:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T04:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/469471\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T04:42:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T04:42:08","slug":"orioles-to-sign-chris-bassitt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/469471\/","title":{"rendered":"Orioles To Sign Chris Bassitt"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Orioles are reportedly in agreement with starter Chris Bassitt<\/a> on a one-year, $18.5MM contract, pending a physical. Bassitt, a client of Meister Sports Management, receives a $3MM signing bonus and would unlock another $500K if he reaches 27 starts. Baltimore has an opening on the 40-man roster after losing infielder Bryan Ramos<\/a> on waivers to St. Louis.<\/p>\n

President of baseball operations Mike Elias has made a habit of signing veteran starters to one-year deals over the past few years. They found some success with Kyle Gibson<\/a> in 2023. Last winter\u2019s reunion with Gibson and additions of\u00a0Charlie Morton<\/a> and\u00a0Tomoyuki Sugano<\/a> did not go as planned. Bassitt is in a similar stage of his career as he nears his 37th birthday, but he should have a higher floor than those previous additions.<\/p>\n

Bassitt didn\u2019t reach 100 MLB innings in a season until his age-30 campaign in 2019. He has been a consistent mid-rotation presence over the last seven years. Only once did his earned run average climb north of 4.00. His 2.29 mark during the shortened season was a small sample outlier, but he has otherwise been a safe bet to allow between three and four earned runs per nine while logging a heavy workload. Bassitt has surpassed 150 innings in each of the last five seasons, one of just six pitchers to do that. He\u2019s eighth in total innings over that stretch.<\/p>\n

The veteran righty has paired the bulk with mid-rotation quality. He\u2019s coming off a 3.96 ERA with slightly better than average underlying marks. Bassitt fanned 22.6% of batters faced against a 7.1% walk rate across 170 1\/3 innings a year ago. His per-pitch whiff rate is a little below average, but he has managed to strike out between 22-23% of opponents in each of the past four seasons.<\/p>\n

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Bassitt\u2019s velocity has ticked down slightly as he has gotten into his mid-30s. His sinker averaged 91.6 mph last season, narrowly a career low. That\u2019s still not far off the 92-93 mph range in which he had worked throughout his career. The sinker is Bassitt\u2019s primary offering, but Statcast identified eight distinct pitches that he used at least occasionally during his final season in Toronto. He mostly works with a sinker, cutter and curveball and generally does well to limit hard contact.<\/p>\n

The biggest concern may be Bassitt\u2019s issues against left-handed hitters. While he held them in check earlier in his career, Bassitt has seen his platoon splits widen over the past few seasons. Since the start of 2023, lefties have gotten to him at a .284\/.360\/.483 clip in more than 1200 plate appearances. He has held same-handed opponents to a punchless .224\/.286\/.323 line in a similar number of at-bats over that stretch.<\/p>\n

Bassitt is coming off a three-year, $63MM contract with the division rival Blue Jays. He provided Toronto with 541 1\/3 innings of 3.89 ERA ball during the regular season. Bassitt only once missed a start, as a minor bout of back inflammation sent him to the injured list last September. He missed the Division Series win over the Yankees but returned for the AL Championship Series. Bassitt pitched out of relief and emerged as one of John Schneider\u2019s most trusted leverage arms in October. He fired 8 2\/3 innings of one-run ball with 10 strikeouts during Toronto\u2019s pennant run.<\/p>\n

One year after helping the Jays go worst to first in the AL East, Bassitt will hope to accomplish the same feat with Baltimore. The Orioles have had a big offseason after stumbling to a 75-87 showing. They signed Pete Alonso<\/a> (a former teammate of Bassitt\u2019s in New York) to a monster five-year, $155MM deal. The O\u2019s swapped oft-injured starter Grayson Rodriguez<\/a> for another righty power bat,\u00a0Taylor Ward<\/a>, while dealing four prospects and a draft choice to the Rays for Shane Baz<\/a>. They signed\u00a0Ryan Helsley<\/a> to a two-year deal to replace injured closer\u00a0F\u00e9lix Bautista<\/a> and reunited with\u00a0Zach Eflin<\/a> on a $10MM contract.<\/p>\n

The Orioles again shied away from the top of the free agent starting pitching market, preferring to make a splash in the middle of the lineup. They\u2019ll hope to unlock another gear from Baz, a former top prospect who has shown flashes but been inconsistent over his first couple seasons. Trevor Rogers<\/a> will look to build off last year\u2019s fantastic final few months, while\u00a0Kyle Bradish<\/a> has a chance to be an upper mid-rotation starter now that he\u2019s recovered from Tommy John surgery.<\/p>\n

Bassitt slots behind Rogers, Bradish and Baz as locks to open the year in Craig Albernaz\u2019s rotation. Eflin will be assured of the fifth starter role as long as he\u2019s fully recovered from last August\u2019s back surgery. He\u2019s expected to be a full participant in Spring Training, so that should be the case. That could push Dean Kremer<\/a> and\/or Tyler Wells<\/a> back to Triple-A Norfolk to open the season. Both pitchers still have an option remaining, though they\u2019re each approaching the five-year service cutoff at which they\u2019d earn the right to refuse any minor league assignments. Wells needs another 40 days on an MLB roster to get there, while Kremer is 60 days away.<\/p>\n

The O\u2019s could use Wells in long relief and start the year with Kremer rounding out a six-man rotation if they want both pitchers in the majors. A rotation surplus usually works itself out before long. The Braves<\/a>, Blue Jays<\/a> and Tigers<\/a> have all announced significant injury losses within the first two days of camp. Even if all of Baltimore\u2019s starters are currently healthy, they\u2019d be fortunate if that\u2019s the case by Opening Day.<\/p>\n

Bassitt may not be the top-of-the-rotation type that O\u2019s fans had coveted, but he\u2019s a sensible pickup for a team that\u2019ll keep an eye on Bradish\u2019s and Eflin\u2019s innings after lost seasons. MLBTR had predicted a two-year, $38MM contract at the beginning of the offseason. Baltimore was able to avoid committing that second season in an offseason when Merrill Kelly<\/a> commanded $20MM annually over two years from the Diamondbacks at the same age.<\/p>\n

The O\u2019s payroll projection climbs to $166MM, as calculated by RosterResource<\/a>. Despite the handful of significant offseason pickups, they\u2019re only about $6MM above where they opened last season. This will probably wrap their significant offseason dealings, but they shouldn\u2019t have an issue taking on some money midseason if they\u2019re positioned to buy. Bassitt\u2019s removal from the market leaves Zac Gallen<\/a>, Lucas Giolito<\/a> and\u00a0Max Scherzer<\/a> as the best free agents available for teams still looking to add.<\/p>\n

Jeff Passan of ESPN<\/a> first reported the agreement and terms. Image courtesy of John E. Sokolowski, Imagn Images.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Orioles are reportedly in agreement with starter Chris Bassitt on a one-year, $18.5MM contract, pending a physical.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":469472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[49,48,7204,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-469471","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-chris-bassitt","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}