DUNEDIN, Fla. — All it took was two pitches for Daulton Varsho to find his comfort zone again.
On a sunny Friday afternoon at TD Ballpark, Varsho hammered a 1-0 pitch from Tigers starter Reese Olson over the right field wall for a home run in his first game action of any kind since his 2024 season ended with September rotator cuff surgery.
Paired with Varsho’s progress throwing behind the scenes, it was an encouraging day for the centre fielder, who was one of three prominent players slated to make their Grapefruit League debuts on an unusually busy day that featured spring games in two different ballparks.
Starter Chris Bassitt also made his spring debut against the Tigers Friday afternoon, going 2.2 innings and 36 pitches while striking out four. Later, against the Yankees in Tampa, Anthony Santander was slated to make his Blue Jays spring debut following some early camp visa issues that required a trip to the Dominican Republic.
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All told, that’s a lot of steps forward for the Blue Jays, who are also expecting Joey Loperfido back in the lineup Friday night after he hit his neck against the centre field wall attempting a catch Tuesday afternoon. But while Varsho’s bat is clearly in mid-season form, his throwing is still a work in progress. He’s been built up to 120 feet and is progressing well with another four weeks to go ahead of opening day.
“I feel like I’m ahead of schedule,” he said. “Throwing where I’m at right now, I’m happy with it.”
The expectation going into spring was that Varsho would likely require an injured list stint while he completes his recovery, but it’s still possible he’d be ready for opening day.
“We’ll see,” said Jays manager John Schneider. “He’s progressing well, so I don’t want to put anything past him or say that’s not a definite possibility. It’ll go right down to the end as long as he doesn’t have any setbacks.”
As for Bassitt, he worked on speeding up his mechanics and staying in attack mode against a Tigers lineup including regulars Kerry Carpenter and Javy Baez. While Schneider said Friday morning that the right-hander might narrow his pitch mix to “maybe three or four of them as opposed to five or six,” Bassitt was not inclined to share his plans in detail.
“We’ll see,” he said.
And could his approach against left-handers change after they posted an .877 OPS against him in 2024?
“We’ll see.”
This much is clear: after a challenging second half in which he posted a 5.23 ERA, the Blue Jays are working with Bassitt to find more consistency. The second half of last season was a challenging one, as the team traded away many veterans, but in 2025 the Blue Jays are once again in win-now mode.
“We were obviously a lot different team than when we were to start,” Schneider said. “I’m not saying that, you know, he wasn’t prepared or ready to pitch. But I think you can hit a little bit of a ‘coast’ button at times if you’re at that point in your career. And he was working on different things.”
Those efforts have continued into the spring, with Bassitt and pitching coach Pete Walker zeroing in on a few key areas.
“I was trying to figure out lefties and do too much stuff last year, just kind of tinkering with things,” Bassitt said. “It was a weird part of the part of the year for all of us, so I was just figuring stuff out and a lot of it just didn’t work. I think me and Pete have a really good game plan right now, and it’s just still tinkering, but I think it’s a lot more structured rather than kind of throwing stuff at a wall and hoping it sticks.”
In the first half of the 2024 season, Bassitt posted a 3.52 ERA in 107.1 innings, so it’s clear he can help the Blue Jays by keeping opposing hitters off-balance.
Now in the final year of his three-year, $63-million contract, Bassitt’s once again central to the Blue Jays’ plans. And with Varsho progressing and Santander about to debut, some key reinforcements are falling back into place alongside him.
