Athletics righty Chris Bassitt has a partially torn UCL and is getting a second opinion as to whether he’ll need Tommy John surgery, according to various reporters on Twitter, including the San Francisco Chronicle’s Susan Slusser. Bassitt will meet with Dr. Timothy Kremchek in Cincinnati on Thursday. Regardless of the outcome, Bassitt doesn’t seem likely to return from the DL, where he was recently placed with an elbow strain, anytime soon.
Bassitt’s velocity has been inconsistent this season, notably dipping several miles per hour in a start against Toronto last week, and (via MLB.com’s Jane Lee) he has also recently complained about his struggles to throw good breaking pitches. “I can’t throw offspeed. I literally can’t throw offspeed,” he said after his last start. “My curveball was nothing, my slider was straight. My best pitch honestly out of every pitch I threw was my changeup.”
Bassitt has pitched 114 innings in parts of two seasons with the A’s since arriving from the White Sox in the Jeff Samardzija trade, with a 4.18 ERA, 6.9 K/9 and 3.5 BB/9 in that time frame while pitching both in the rotation and in relief. With Bassitt on the DL, the suddenly-jumbled Athletics rotation now includes Sonny Gray, Rich Hill, Kendall Graveman and the newly-promoted Sean Manaea and Jesse Hahn.
This one hurts…
It’s not that jumbled. I agree they were counting on Bassitt, and it’s a bummer he’s hurt, but all of these guys were in the mix for this year once they traded for Manaea and signed Hill. Hahn’s demotion, to me, was the real surprise.