Toronto Blue Jays Ace Dominating Despite Scarce Use of Most Productive Pitch
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One of the biggest surprises in baseball thus far has been the performance of Toronto Blue Jays ace, Chris Bassitt.
Coming off a 2024 season in which he had a -0.1 WAR across 171 innings, not much was expected out of the veteran in 2025. He was a reliable innings-eater in the middle or back end of the rotation, making at least 27 starts in each of the last four years.
It was a disappointing campaign after he led the American League with 16 victories and 33 starts in 2023 in his first year with the Blue Jays.
But, through his first five starts of 2025, he has regained that form and more, taking his production to a level not previously achieved in his career.
Bassitt has thrown 28.2 innings with a stellar 1.88 ERA and MLB-best 1.49 FIP. He has allowed 26 hits and walked only six batters, giving him some ratios that are near career-high levels in Year 11.
Allowing home runs have never been too big of an issue for him in his career, but he has yet to surrender one this season.
On top of the long ball prevention, the most impressive thing at the start of the season has been his strikeouts.
In his career, including his five starts thus far this year, Bassitt has a K/9 of 8.4. His single-season high is 9.1 as racking up punchouts has never been a big part of his game plan.
That has changed in 2025 already with 34 strikeouts and a 10.7 K/9 ratio. If he keeps up the 28.6% strikeout rate he currently has, it would be easily a single-season best and blow away his career average.
What has led to such a breakout performance for the right-handed veteran?
As shared by Michael Salfino of The Athletic, his cutter is dicing up opponents.
So far, the devastating offering has produced a 38.2% whiff rate with an xxOBA of .124. Both of those numbers are elite, as opponents are being blown away by them. He has used it mostly up in the zone, according to the heat maps on Baseball Savant, and opponents just cannot figure it out.
It isn’t even the pitch he uses most often, which means that he could potentially take his production to another level if he incorporated it more into his game plan.
Right now, according to Baseball Savant, he is throwing it 17.2% of the time. That is his second-most-used pitch behind his sinker, which is thrown 39.6% of the time.
If he upped the cutter usage into the low or mid-20s, he would be able to maintain the career-high strikeout rate he has produced to this point.
Arguably, the most impressive part about his breakout is that Bassitt is doing it with no solid offspeed pitches. His offspeed run value is currently -1, which is the 23rd percentile in baseball.
His fastball run value, on the other hand, is an elite +6 and in the 98th percentile, which means he should not be afraid to lean into cutter usage even more.
