Kevin Gausman brings a splitter personality to the Blue Jays

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/04/2022 (1305 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For reasons known only to himself, with the Florida temperature outside in the sweltering 80s, Kevin Gausman had taken to wearing a toque.

Every day. In the extravagant Blue Jays clubhouse. A toque.

If it were allowed, it would be a cool way for the marquee moundsman to make his Toronto debut Saturday afternoon. As a quasi hoser, once removed. Because he absolutely cannot wait to embrace T.O. And be embraced in return.

“I’ve always loved Toronto. It’s a beautiful city, very vibrant. I’m a big foodie and some of my favourite restaurants are there. It’s such a melting pot of a city. People from all over the world end up in Toronto. My wife speaks French, you know.”

Not that Taylor Gausman will likely have much opportunity to parle français, as her husband is well aware. Some five-and-a-half years as an Oriole brought him to the Rogers Centre often enough. That included a rough initiation the first time he took the big-league bump and got whacked in a 12-6 loss.

Gausman has reinvented himself on several occasions since those salad days, through good times and bad. When he was rehabbing from an injury with Atlanta, he studied the delivery of teammate Sean Newcombe, a left-hander. “I recorded him and flipped the screen, so I could see what it looked like as a right-handed pitcher. I watched that over and over.”

He took that dramatically adjusted delivery to Cincinnati after the Braves exposed him to waivers. And after being designated for assignment there, he took it to San Francisco. It was the Giants who would be most responsible for Gausman’s renaissance as a starter, convincing him to shave down his repertoire and throw primarily two pitches: a four-seam fastball and a devastating splitter.

That first season on the Bay coincided with the emergence of COVID-19 and a truncated schedule. That provided a backup plan, should his personal trajectory go south.

“The COVID season, knowing that I was only going to have to make 10 starts, I thought, ‘Well, if it doesn’t work, I can just fall back on the fact that it was the COVID year. If I do really bad, maybe teams won’t really care.’

“Honestly, COVID was probably one of the best things that ever happened to me, because I had a mound in my garage. I just made my dry delivery thousands of times, kind of found the feeling that I wanted to feel. So it worked out for me.”

A 3-3 record in that bounceback season, 2020, got him a qualifying offer for a second year, and provided glimmers of what he could still become. Gausman admits the peripatetic years had been difficult, not living up to the projections that had made him Baltimore’s first-round draft pick, fourth overall, in 2012.

“There were times, talking to my wife about it, when I said, ‘This isn’t fun.’ When you’re really struggling, especially as a starting pitcher, and you feel like every five days you’re getting your stuff kicked in, it can really make you question things. I was at a very low point. But I always had the utmost confidence in myself. Things weren’t going my way but I could kind of see that I was better than my ERA showed.”

It certainly showed last year, when Gausman was in the Cy Young conversation and made the all-star team before his performance dipped. Nevertheless, he went 14-6 amidst a wondrous Giants season. He explained the why of his second-half struggles to the Star:

“Not many people know this but I had a lot of health issues with my wife and unborn child at the time. I went from the all-star game to going home and a scheduled ultrasound for my wife, who was 32 weeks pregnant. They essentially told us she wouldn’t be going home. To go from the ultimate high of highs, being at the all-star game in Coors Field, which is less than 30 minutes from where I grew up, to then having a doctor tell you there might be something wrong with either your wife or your unborn child was really hard.”

Taylor Gausman was in the hospital for a week, monitored. When their daughter, Sutton, came into the world three weeks prematurely, she had health issues. “We had to see a pediatric neurologist and she had hip dysplasia.” Her hip socket didn’t fully cover the ball portion of the upper thigh bone. “She was wearing a brace.”

Sutton, just turned eight months and a little sister to eight-year-old Sadie, is now perfectly healthy. But those were trying weeks and months for Gausman, who routinely went from the ballpark to the hospital.

“I just wasn’t in the same mindset after that. I was more focused on my wife and my child than I was worried about winning the Cy Young. I was thinking about the more important things in life.”

Gausman was fully present by the time the Giants won the National League West, on the last game of the season, over the archrival Los Angeles Dodgers. Of course, San Francisco was fated to lose the division series to L.A. in five games, with Gausman tapped for a relief appearance in the decider, following his earlier start. “It was a historic season,” he said. “So many magical moments. To be able to finally win the NL West, to dethrone the Dodgers, there’s no better feeling. That was our World Series.

“Heartbreaking, the way it ended, on a checked swing (in Game 5) that I don’t think Wilmer Flores even swung on.” That was a source of endless debate. Of sweet significance, Gausman threw the last pitch that Buster Posey caught in his stellar career.

Oddly, the Giants never made a re-up offer to Gausman. He’s not bitter. The Jays, long interested in the strapping starter, appeared on the horizon and zoomed in, signing the 30-year-old to a five-year $110-million (U.S.) contract.

So now he brings that wicked splitter to Toronto, on the heels of his best statistical year ever: a 2.81 ERA and 192 innings pitched. He’s durable.

Winnipeg Free Press | Newsletter

The Warm-Up

Winnipeg Jets Game Days

On Winnipeg Jets game days, hockey writers Mike McIntyre and Ken Wiebe send news, notes and quotes from the morning skate, as well as injury updates and lineup decisions. Arrives a few hours prior to puck drop.

Sign up for The Warm-Up

Sign Up

I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

“The splitter, it’s kind of an outlier pitch,” Gausman said. “There’s not many guys who throw it anymore, especially starting pitchers. Guys with really good breaking balls, there are dozens of them. So hitters are seeing really good breaking balls, day in and day out. Whereas they don’t see really good splitters very often.”

And that splitter? It has a spin rate of 1,600 to 1,700 revolutions per minute, the highest in baseball.

“It spins a lot.”

Just as Gausman is now spinning his baseball story as a Blue Jay.

Rosie DiManno is a Toronto-based columnist covering sports and current affairs for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @rdimanno