An Ode to Chris Bassitt

It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what people think Chris Bassitt is, and perhaps even more difficult to figure out what he will be going forward.  But what on one can’t argue with and what isn’t discussed enough, is that he has been absolutely stellar in 2021.  The stranger part is that he hasn’t been exceedingly better at anything in 2021 than he has the rest of his career, he’s just been slightly better at everything.  The proverbial “putting it all together” that analysts hope happens for their favorite prospects or late bloomers appears to have happened with Bassitt.  Strikeouts are up, walks are down, hard hit % is down, but none of these have moved significantly in these directions.  How do you explain a massive increase in surface results without any significant outlier improvement when looking under the hood?  That’s precisely the question we’re going to attempt to answer here.   

 
To delve a bit deeper into some of the advanced metrics, we’ll first examine K% as it pertains to previous seasons.  Two things can at once be true- he is having the best season of his career (technically) and the increase in K% is hardly noticeable.  When he first made into the big leagues he was even less of a strikeout threat, bouncing from 15-17% K rates his first few turns through the big leagues.   There was steady but unexciting improvement in 2018-2020 as he pushed over the 20% threshold, peaking in 2019 at 23%.  There’s a clue in here as to the current year’s improvement, as 2019 was the first season he was expected to handle a full work load as a starting pitcher for an entire season (25 starts as opposed to a previous high of 13).  Pitchers are creatures of habit, starting pitchers even more so, and allowing Bassitt to flourish in the role he has clearly demonstrated he is most comfortable in has allowed him to unlock previously untapped potential from his skill set.  Repetition and incremental improvement is often a pre-requisite to sustained success, and that has been the case here.  

Along those same lines, the walk rate has followed a similar trend of steady and incremental improvement, consistently flirting with a BB% around 10% through 2018, and then declining to the 7% range in his first full season and below even that each of the last two seasons.  Both of these indicate that he is exhibiting better control and command, which when done consistently in a Kyle Hendricks sort of way, can allow a pitcher to achieve much better results than their pitch mix and velocity might otherwise be able to.   

Speaking of Hendricks in particular, he is often thought of as the modern day epitome of the elite control/command archetype, Bassitt may have an even higher ceiling.  Bassitt’s higher velocity and incorporation of both a slider and cutter to keep hitters on their toes could eventually profile a 30% K rate type of arm.  And while Bassitt is already 32, he has relatively few big league innings in him and has proven to be durable when asked to be, so may still have a number of good years in him.  

Moving on to other areas in which he has shown improvement of late- the batted ball profile has remained remarkably consistent over the years, with a noted exception being a large shift down in hard contact this season to 26% after hovering in the mid-30s for the majority of his career.  The ground ball/fly ball mix has remain constant with a slight ground ball lean, but nothing on either extreme.  So essentially he has become an improved version of past iterations in that he gives up less hard contact, strikes out more opponents and walks fewer of them, and has all the opportunity to do it every 5^th day he could want.  All of that has resulted in a career low xFIP, SIERA, WAR and just about every other advanced metric you could think of.   

So is it possible to get better without… getting better?  Has Bassitt just run into a season long string of good luck and is going to hit a wall of regression soon?   Has he just faced miserable opponents that allowed him to dominate without him having to be dominant?  That last question is quantifiable and worth looking into- so let’s do that.  Using wOBA as the category by which we rank opposing offenses, Bassitt has faced the following teams in his 17 starts: 

Astros (1^st) 

Dodgers (7^th) 

Diamondbacks Twice (25^th) 

Tigers (22^nd) 

Orioles (21^st) 

Rays (15^th) 

Blue Jays (2^nd) 

Red Sox (3^rd) 

Twins (9^th) 

Angels Twice (8^th) 

Mariners (27^th) 

Royals (19^th) 

Yankees (13^th) 

Rangers Twice (23^rd) 

So to recap that’s 8 teams in the top third in wOBA, 6 teams in the bottom third, and 3 teams in the middle, a pretty even split all the way around to be sure.  His two losses did come against the Dodgers and Astros, but it’s not like they were extremely poor starts.  In fact, it is not particularly easy to even determine what his worst start is.  He hasn’t allowed more than 4 runs in a single start all season.  Sometimes not getting blown up is just as valuable to a starting rotation (and the bullpen that has to eat the innings from the blow ups) as putting up frontline starter dominant numbers.   

Based on all of the above, it’s not unreasonable to expect a similar performance from Bassitt not just this season, but going forward in future seasons as well.  Considering he doesn’t carry as much name value as other front line starters, this sort of discount due to lack of pedigree but not lack of performance is something to be cognizant of and act upon in both season long and DFS settings.  So while you won’t likely see him at the top of any individual statistical category and while he may not possess any elite individual tool or skill, the combination of his entire skill set combined with the opportunity that his performance has afforded him will make him a valuable fantasy asset worthy of your consideration.