DUNEDIN, Fla. — Chris Bassitt waited all of two pitches before he turned the pitch timer against his new Toronto Blue Jays teammate, George Springer. On Thursday, in the very first at-bat of his live batting practice session against Toronto’s heavy hitters, the veteran right-hander stared in with plenty of time left on the new countdown clock being implemented by MLB this season, then he held the ball — tick, tick, tick — until there was only one second left. Then he coiled and fired.
Famously armed with a broad arsenal of pitches and strongly held ideas about how to deploy them, Bassitt’s name often comes up in conversations about pitchers who might struggle to cope with the addition of the 15- or 20-second pitch timer.