Jays’ Bass 'distanced' himself from game after postseason nightmare

It would be a giant understatement to say things didn’t go as Anthony Bass had planned last October.

Entering the game trying to protect a four-run lead in the top of the eighth inning, Bass threw 13 pitches, didn’t record an out, and in the blink of an eye was quickly given the hook three batters later.

It was the start of a collective meltdown for the Toronto Blue Jays in Game 2 of their crushing postseason defeat at the hands of the Seattle Mariners. Bass’ involvement unfortunately soured an otherwise fantastic personal campaign for the 35-year-old veteran, with the disappointment of it all sending the right-hander into a long off-season searching for a mental refresh.

“I distanced myself from the game,” Bass said as he gears up for his 12th big-league season this spring in Dunedin, Fla. “Didn’t watch a whole lot of the postseason, spent a lot of family time, just get away from the game to flush it mentally.

“I’ve definitely experienced failure quite a bit in my career, but at that magnitude? Probably not, no. Last game of the year not going well, that’s probably one of the lower moments.”

That’s a sentiment felt by everyone involved, with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. saying it’s something they’re not talking about in the clubhouse this spring as they try to move past it.

Whether it’s a young player with relatively little playoff experience, like Guerrero Jr. or Bo Bichette, or a postseason vet like George Springer, it doesn’t get much lower than last Oct. 8 at Rogers Centre.

Trailing by seven runs at one point, the M’s comeback now sits second on the list of postseason come-from-behind wins, second only to the Philadelphia A’s erasing an eight-run deficit in the 1929 World Series.

It ended in carnage, too, with Bass’ meltdown preceding one of closer Jordan Romano’s worst outings in a while, as well as an ugly on-field collision in short left-centre between Bichette and Springer.

“I don’t need to watch the video,” Bass remarked. “I remember the sequences to all of them. I didn’t need to go back and take a look.

“Excited to put that behind us and learn from those two games in Toronto,” he added. “I think this group, in a sense, kind of needed to get knocked down to learn from the mistakes we all made in those two games, so that next time we do put ourselves in that position in the postseason that we’re ready for it.”

Despite the troublesome final outing, the Jays made the no-brainer decision to pick up the $3-million club option on Bass for 2023, bringing the right-hander back to play another important late-inning role for manager John Schneider.

The 2022 resume is impressive. Bass posted a career-best 1.54 ERA on the back of a career-high 9.3 strikeouts per nine innings, limiting the walks and using his slider more than he ever has.

Throwing that pitch 55.7 per cent of the time, the slider generated a massive 43.8 whiff rate and held batters to a measly .180 average and .324 slugging percentage.

It was no accident, and the Jays saw that when they traded 2018 first-round pick Jordan Groshans to the Miami Marlins at the August deadline in order to get Bass and fellow right-hander Zach Pop as bullpen reinforcements.

“It started in the offseason prior to 2022,” Bass said. “The pitching coach in Miami, Mel Stottlemyre Jr., created a really good map for me to have success. And the year before I was really struggling having success against left-handed batters. Pretty much the focus was on trying to get lefties out more consistently and I kind of tweaked my approach to them. Even though there’s still more work to be done on that, I really improved from the year before.”

Pairing his swing-and-miss slider with his ground-ball-generating sinker propelled Bass to a career year, but the free-agent-to-be feels there’s even more in the tank with another adjustment or two.

That all starts with his continued success against lefties, who have slugged .433 off Bass during the course of his career.

“I was messing with trying to create some more movement on my fastball, but I quickly found out that my fastball is what it is, and I can’t create a whole lot more movement on the pitch based on my arm slot,” Bass said of what he worked on over the winter once he got back on a mound. “I think I had a really good gameplan last year [with that pitch] and it worked, so executing the gameplan is going to allow me to have success again.

“I’m not going to reveal all my secrets, but location of the pitches, that’s one of them, and sequencing of the pitches, areas of the zone where some of my pitches play better than others, especially against left-handed bats. But at the end of the day, it’s about executing in high-leverage situations, and I was able to do that more consistently.”

Five months after the loss to the M’s, the Jays bullpen returns mostly intact, with Erik Swanson the only new face expected in the group of eight arms that will start the season. The late-inning leverage group of Romano, Tim Mayza, Yimi Garcia, Adam Cimber and Bass will be counted on in similar roles, with Bass getting a lot of the assignments in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings against tough right-handers.

While it may lack the name value and high-end velocity of other ‘pens around baseball, it’s a diverse group that was mostly solid in 2022, pitching to a collective 3.77 ERA, good for ninth out of 15 teams in the American League.

A full season of Bass throwing like he did last year, as well as Swanson’s lethal splitter being added to the mix, and the entire group is confident they won’t be seen as the Achilles heel. Far from it.

“It has all the potential to be one of the best bullpens in baseball, no question about it,” Bass stated. “We have a bunch of different looks, a lot of different arsenals, a lot of different weapons, and the successful bullpens I’ve been a part of have that.”