How Gausman plans to adjust to new balk rules

DUNEDIN, Fla. -- You’re so vain, you probably think this rule is about you.

For Kevin Gausman, though, it really is.

The Blue Jays’ right-hander will need to alter his delivery in 2023 to comply with the new MLB rules, and while the laid-back 32-year-old is taking it all with a smile, he’s quickly become the token example for the rule itself.

With the new pitch timer, pitchers will need to come to a “full body stop” prior to their delivery. Once their delivery starts, the pitch timer stops. Gausman, however, has long had a physical tick in his delivery where he rocks back and forth, tapping his front foot on the mound’s dirt over and over. This happens three, five or 10 times, then he finally lifts his leg to deliver the pitch.

• An inside look at how the new rules will work

Pitchers already had to come to a full stop, but the problem now is that the clock operator would have no way of knowing exactly which one of these movements represents the beginning of his actual delivery. As a result, that movement would be called a balk under new MLB rules, and balks are something that Gausman is plenty familiar with.

“It’s MLB’s way of trying to make everybody more uniform. It’s unfortunate that, for me, it’s something that I do naturally,” Gausman said. “I don’t really think about my taps or how many I’m doing. When guys are on base, I think about it a little bit more, but it’s something I’ll have to change, obviously. The good thing is, we have six weeks to mess with my delivery and figure out what’s going to be new and comfortable.”

This spring, as Gausman puts it, will be “weird.” He expects some pitchers to forget about the pitch timer entirely as they develop that new mental muscle memory. It should be enough time to adapt to this change, though, even though Gausman expects he’ll be watched a little closer.

“As baseball players, that’s all we’ve been doing,” Gausman said. “We’ve been trying to fit Spring Training into three weeks, then spring was three weeks last year, too. It’s a game of adjustments. Everybody has the same amount of time. If you’re not prepared, that’s on you.”

This should be doable for Gausman. The foot tap and rocking motion he starts his delivery with is a habit, but not a fundamental piece of his actual delivery. He understands, himself, why the rule is being changed, and it’s easy to understand why from the outside looking in.

Gausman’s only wish is that this rule stays consistent across the sport, and he plans to play his own part in that.

“That’s all we ask for as pitchers. If you’re going to have a big zone, have a big zone, but keep the zone big,” Gausman said. “If you have a small zone, same thing. We have to be able to make adjustments based on that. Hopefully this is a hard line. Hopefully there’s no discrepancy between whether I stopped or didn’t stop. So if I do the same thing every time, they can’t say that.”

Once Gausman gets the new delivery down pat, expectations are high.

Gausman pitched to a 3.35 ERA last season, looking particularly strong in the early half. He’s been rolling that around in his mind lately, wondering how he can carry over his strong starts into the latter half of the season, but he doesn’t think it’s related to conditioning or stamina. Manager John Schneider believes that Gausman’s incredible splitter is what allows him to “hit the ground running,” though, and believes some of that will handle itself naturally.

“I think it was a lot of bad luck,” Schneider said, “and that was pretty well documented with balls in play around him. But for a guy like him, who has been around as long as he has, he’s done everything that he needs to do to be able to be strong in the second half.”

Schneider is right. Gausman had a .363 BABIP against him last season, an abnormally high number and well above his .314 career average. Even if you only watched a handful of his starts, you saw ground balls sneaking through holes and weak fly balls dropping just in front of fielders. If Gausman didn’t have bad luck, he wouldn’t have any luck at all.

Gausman’s peripheral numbers were dominant, though, painting the picture of a starter who deserved a better finish than ninth in AL Cy Young Award voting. If a few more balls bounce his way in 2023 -- and he can stop those toes from tapping -- he should have no trouble improving on that.