Chris Bassitt carried a shutout into the seventh inning while Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Matt Chapman bashed home runs as the visiting Toronto Blue Jays beat the Houston Astros 4-2 Tuesday.
While Bassitt (2-2) continued his incremental progress following a ragged start to his season, Chapman added two more extra-base hits to his robust start. After entering Tuesday tied for the major league lead with 12 extra-base hits, Chapman went 2-for-4 with his fifth home run and ninth double.
Chapman homered two batters after Guerrero gave the Blue Jays a 1-0 lead with his one-out shot the opposite way to right field in the top of the fourth inning. Guerrero smacked his third home run of the season against Astros right-hander Jose Urquidy (1-1), who fell into a two-run deficit when Chapman cranked a 373-foot blast to right-center with two outs in the frame.
Urquidy faced one batter over the minimum through three innings, benefitting from a dazzling throw from catcher Martin Maldonado that erased Bo Bichette as he attempted to swipe second base with two outs in the first. Urquidy later induced an inning-ending double play from George Springer in the third, but following his woes in the fourth, Urquidy found more trouble in the fifth.
Brandon Belt, Whit Merrifield and Santiago Espinal reached in succession to open the fifth, with Espinal plating Belt with his RBI single. Bichette chased Urquidy with an opposite-field single to right that scored Merrifield and extended the Toronto lead to 4-0.
The Astros fashioned a rally in the eighth behind four singles, including RBI hits from Yordan Alvarez and Kyle Tucker. But Toronto closer Jordan Romano snuffed that rally and returned for the ninth, earning his league-leading seventh save by working around a one-out baserunner.
Bassitt surrendered nine runs in his Toronto debut on April 2. Over his subsequent three starts, he has allowed four runs in 18 1/3 innings. He retired the first 11 Astros he faced and worked around a pair of baserunners by getting Tucker to ground out to close the fourth. Bassitt appeared set to complete seven innings but a one-out Espinal fielding error ended his night.
Bassitt allowed three hits and walked one batter while notching five strikeouts in 6 1/3 innings.
–Field Level Media
