Canada’s Metchie III, Betts shine in NFL pre-season

August 18, 2024

While the NFL pre-season really means nothing when it comes to determining which teams will look good when the games actually count, the exhibition schedule can be an excellent stage for players to show they belong in the spotlight.

CHICAGO — Back on the mound following one of his worst starts in some time — an eight-hit, seven-run, two-homer calamity last weekend under the Rogers Centre roof — Chris Bassitt tried to put an ornery five days behind him and sneak a first-pitch fastball by Saturday’s leadoff hitter, Ian Happ, under clear skies at Wrigley Field:

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Whoops. Fortunately, two pitches later, a well-positioned Addison Barger made a play on a Michael Busch flare in right to give Bassitt the first out he was looking for. But eight of the next nine pitches were balls, as Bassitt walked a pair and drew a mound visit from his pitching coach, Pete Walker.

Bassitt, kicking at the mound beneath him and occasionally hitting himself in the head with his glove between pitches, ultimately escaped his early bind thanks to Seiya Suzuki running into an out at third on a stolen base attempt and Isaac Paredes beating a full-count sinker directly into the dirt before home plate. But then those skies above Wrigley Field opened.

If you were trying to design the most irritating follow-up possible to Bassitt’s blowup last Sunday, going with that first inning, followed by a 39-minute delay that forced the Blue Jays starter to walk through driving rain to the ivy-covered, right-field bullpen to simulate another, would be a good start.

OK, wait, we can do better. What if you resumed the game, watched Bassitt search for his feel while retiring his first batter of the second inning, before only then calling for the tarp and delaying the game once more? What if Bassitt was forced to march, head hung, glove in hand, through the rain for a second time to stay loose in the bullpen?

Now that would be aggravating for a pitcher who, at the best of times, “looks like he’s being sent off to war,” as Blue Jays manager John Schneider once aptly put it. Yet such is life without a roof over the field, which gave Bassitt a host of challenges to overcome Saturday in a 3-2 Blue Jays defeat to the Cubs, after he blamed last weekend’s struggles on the way his pitches behaved under the dome in Toronto.

“I think if there’s a pitcher that’s well equipped for a rain delay, it’s Chris,” Schneider said afterwards. “He did a good job with Pete, went down, kept himself moving, mentally stayed locked in. I think if it got a little bit longer — once you get to 45 minutes or an hour, you start to think about [making a pitching change.] But I think it being early in the game, too, kind of helped him stay in there.”

That Bassitt settled in after all that and retired nine of his next 10 on 38 pitches was fairly remarkable, all things considered. And he nearly pulled off an unlikely high-wire act in the fifth, when he allowed the first two batters to reach on soft-hit singles then retired the next two on a botched sacrifice bunt attempt and swinging strikeout.

The third out Bassitt needed was within Daulton Varsho’s reach, as the centre fielder went up the centre field wall after a Busch drive, attempting to pull off another in a long line of extra-base hit robberies. But the ball hit off the very edge of Varsho’s glove, allowing the Cubs first baseman to race into third with a two-run triple.

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A Suzuki strikeout later, Bassitt’s day was done at 76 pitches of three-run, five-and-dive ball. After one of his worst starts in some time, Bassitt followed it up with one of his strangest.

“Credit to him to get through five. That seems like an eight-inning outing for him, really,” Schneider said. “But he stayed locked in. It’s a first-pitch homer, kind of an ambush job. And then I thought he did pretty well. It was a weird day. Definitely a weird day with the delays. And it’s kind of a stressful outing for him.”

For his part, Bassitt didn’t bemoan the elements, crediting the umpires and Cubs grounds crew for keeping him updated on how the weather was developing. The first delay came out of nowhere; the second one was more predictable. Not that it made life any easier for Bassitt as he tried to walk the fine line between not letting his body get too cooled down or too warmed up as he waited for clouds to clear.

“You just have to understand your body and how much you need to throw to stay loose. It’s pretty easy to overdo. It’s also pretty easy to not be prepared,” Bassitt said. “I went to the bullpen twice. But I didn’t want to go and throw 45, 50 pitches. So, I probably threw 10-to-15 at higher effort.

“I was like, just deal. Just deal with the hand you’re dealt kind of thing. It is what it is. Just glad no one got hurt. I mean, obviously, no one can play Mother Nature and not let it rain. Overall, it was fine.”

Perhaps the only good news to come from the multiple delays for the Blue Jays was that they forced the Cubs to lift their starter — weakly-hit-groundball merchant Justin Steele — from the game. A control-and-command left-hander who can both cut and sink his fastball on either side of the plate, Steele is exactly the kind of pitcher who’s given Toronto’s lineup fits this season and last.

But Saturday, after throwing only 36 pitches across two scoreless innings, Steele took an early exit, giving way to former Blue Jay Nate Pearson, who switched sides only three weeks ago.

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The Blue Jays couldn’t get to their old friend, or his new friends that followed out of Chicago’s bullpen, as Pearson, Tyson Miller, and Julian Merryweather put up zeroes through six. That is until Steward Berroa — hitting in place of Leo Jimenez, who left after an inning due to right knee soreness and is considered day-to-day — sparked a rally against Drew Smyly in the seventh with a two-strike single, moving to third on a George Springer knock and scoring as Varsho bunted for a base hit.

That opportunity evaporated quickly, as Springer was caught stealing third base a pitch before Vladimir Guerrero Jr. flew out to centre. Another one came an inning later, when Alejandro Kirk and Spencer Horwitz drew walks. But Berroa struck out on three pitches — siwnging, looking, looking — to end the threat.

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As rain began to fall once again in the ninth, Addison Barger took Jorge Lopez 418 feet to centre field, narrowing Toronto’s deficit to only one. But it wasn’t enough for the Blue Jays on a wet, weird day at Wrigley.

“We hit some balls hard today. Deep fly balls, line outs, things like that,” Schneider said. “It was just kind of a weird day all around.”

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Canada’s Metchie III, Betts shine in NFL pre-season

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