The Athlete Comes Out in Athletics' Bassitt in Shutout Performance Against Astros
Chris Bassitt came out of his last start in Houston embarrassed by what he’d done.
A three-run, two-out homer in the first inning to Kyle Tucker put the A’s in a hole they couldn’t claw out of, and the A’s wound up being swept in a doubleheader by the second place Astros. He vowed that Monday’s series opener against the Astros in the Coliseum wouldn’t be anything like that.
It wasn’t. Bassitt turned in one of the finest pitching efforts from an A’s starter with seven scoreless innings in a 6-0 win, capping it off with a terrific defensive play that he says should answer some questions.
“We’ve had a pitcher debate among the starters about who the best athlete is, and I hope that ended it,” Bassitt said of his stealing a hit from the Astros’ George Springer. “I’m over Fiers saying he’s a better athlete than me.”
Springer chopped a ball well over Bassitt’s head, but the 6-foot-5 Bassitt made a quick retreat, speared the ball and turned to make an on-target throw to first base.
”Usually on that play, I’m running away screaming because (third baseman Matt) Chapman is running down my throat,” Bassitt said.
Chapman is on the bench for a bit with right hip tendinitis, and Tommy La Stella, who was playing third Monday, doesn’t cover ground the way Chapman does. Neither does anybody else, for that matter.
“He’s quite the athlete,” A’s manager Bob Melvin said of Bassitt. “If anybody’s seen him play basketball, that wouldn’t surprise you. You know he looks kind of long and lanky with a lot of moving parts, but he’s a really good athlete.”
On Monday he was a motivated one. The A’s have led the American League West since early on, but the Astros are the three-time defending division champions. A five-game, four-day series in Oakland could well decide the division title, one way or the other.
“We want to start this series hot, which we did,” Bassitt said. “But we wanted to increase the gap vs. us and Houston. This is a massive series. We don’t have many games left. With the break that we had, everyone should feel really good.
“So, we have a great opportunity here to not end thing, but definitely to give us some comfortable wiggle room. And I think tonight was just the start of it.”
The A’s, back at 10 games over .500 at 24-14, lead the Astros, who have lost the first five games of their current road trip, by 4½ games in the West. Oakland has 22 games left, the Astros just 19. Oakland is in position to put the squeeze on the Astros, beginning with a 3:10 p.m. (PT) doubleheader Tuesday. Winning the first game of the series was important, and Bassitt was at his finest, even with the eight days off since the last time he started in Houston.
“Everything was really good,” Bassitt said. “The last two weeks have been kind of crazy with the time off that we’ve had. I tried to make the base of hit, and I knew my body was going to feel really good with the time off. But I was working on mechanically being right with my off-speed pitches, which if felt were way off before.”
Tony Kemp doubled home a run in the second to give Bassitt an early lead, and later int eh inning, Sean Murphy added a solo homer. Murphy would add a two-run single in the eighth to help the A’s pull away.
Murphy, who credited it night at the plate to “not fouling off pitches I need to hit,” had words of praise for Bassitt’s mound game.
“His off-speed stuff was better than his last outing,” Murphy said. “He was locating it, commanding it, mixing it in all pretty well.”
And he was blown away by Bassitt’s defense against Springer, too. He said he wasn’t alone in that.
“That was great,” he said. “The (pitching) staff loved it from the stands. They were going crazy.”
Follow Athletics insider John Hickey on Twitter: @JHickey3
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