Better know your Blue Jays 40-man: Anthony Bass

If your first thought was ‘Anthony Bass is on the Blue Jays’ then you and I had the same thought. We picked him up off waivers back in October.

Bass is a 32-year-old, right-handed reliever. He’s played parts of 8 seasons in the MLB with the Padres, Astros, Rangers, Cubs, and Mariners. He also spent a season in Japan. In 191 MLB games he has a 4.38 ERA. His rookie season was pretty good. He had a 1.68 ERA in 27 games, 3 starts.

Last year was his second-best season. 44 games, a 3.56 ERA with 5 saves. In 48 innings he allowed 30 hits, 5 home runs, 17 walks,and 43 strikeouts. Batters hit just .179/.257/.304 against him, helped out by a .203 BABIP (almost 100 points better than his career average).

He got a lot more soft contact than in the past, 25% soft contact rate when it was 13.3 the season before. And his hard contact rate dropped from 37.8% to 29.7.

Why the changes? His fastball average speed went up (95.4 MPH from 94.1 in 2018). Beyond that, he threw a slider and a splitter that he used a lot more than in the past. About his pitchers Brooks baseball says:

His sinker is blazing fast, generates more whiffs/swing compared to other pitchers’ sinkers and has little sinking action compared to a true sinker. His slider is much harder than usual and has some two-plane movement. His splitter is a real worm killer that generates an extreme number of groundballs compared to other pitchers’ splitters, has slight cut action, is slightly firmer than usual and has movement that suggests a lot of backspin. His fourseam fastball is a real worm killer that generates an extreme number of groundballs compared to other pitchers’ fourseamers, generates a high number of swings & misses compared to other pitchers’ fourseamers, has some natural sinking action and has well above average velo.

Matt listed him as a possible non-tender candidate back in November. He’s out of options, so he’s going to have to have a strong spring to make the team. But there is a lot of room in the bullpen. Behind Ken Giles and Sam Gaviglio and Shun Yamaguchi (unless he gets the fifth starter spot) there are a lot of spots waiting for someone to take them. It is going to be interesting to watch Charlie Montoyo try to figure it.