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New-look Bassitt could be ready to pay big dividends

Chris Bassitt spent much of 2015 wonder why he was getting hit harder than he’d like.

Toward the end of the season he learned he was tipping his pitches, and he turned to the club’s ace, Sonny Gray, for help. Gray doesn’t tip his pitches, never has, and while Gray is actually younger than Bassitt by about eight months, he’s got the Major League pitching credentials that Bassitt, like many others, doesn’t have.

So Bassitt spent the off-season with Gray as his throwing partner. On Sunday he showed a new side to himself. Instead of setting up on the mound facing the plate, he faced third base.