Chris Bassitt is considering retirement after one season with the Baltimore Orioles.
The Baltimore Orioles got a strong outing from right-hander Chris Bassitt this week during his potential final start of the year against the Toronto Blue Jays.
Bassitt faced the Blue Jays, his former club, and he outdueled his former teammate Max Scherzer in the process. His five innings of two-run ball earned him his ninth win on the year and kept Baltimore’s playoff hopes alive briefly.
Afterward, Bassitt admitted he is unsure about what comes next when speaking with reporters. The 37-year-old right-hander is heading for free agency once again, and he made clear the decision may not be entirely his own if he continues to pitch in MLB.
“My future is the last game of the season I’ll be throwing. That’s my future right now,” he said, via Jake Rill of MLB.com. “As for everything else, man, I’ve got a 7-year-old at home, I’ve got a 3-year-old at home and a wife that wants me to be home. So yeah, we'll cross that bridge when we do.”
He continued, “But I mean, overall, I still have a lot of fire in me to definitely do something. I’m gonna have to win the wife over, I’ll tell you that. But yeah, there's a lot of fire still in me. I know I still can play this game at a really high level.”
Bassitt has missed plenty of time this year due to injury. He returned in mid-August from June back surgery to remove bone spurs, a procedure that cost him more than two months on the injured list.
Since coming back, he has looked like the steady arm Baltimore signed. Overall though, he still owns a 9-5 record with a 4.59 ERA, 74 strikeouts and 102 innings across 16 starts.
He joined the Orioles on a one-year, $18.5 million deal before the season, brought in to be an effective arm in the back of the rotation. Bassitt will still enter the winter as one of the more reliable veteran innings-eaters on the market. Teams will be calling if he wants to keep going.
For the Orioles, the year has been a letdown. At 78-81, Baltimore has spent all of September fighting to make the playoffs, but they were eliminated on Thursday. If Bassitt does choose to pitch in 2027, another one-year deal to bring him back to Baltimore would make plenty of sense for both sides. However, that remains uncertain.
