Gausman (13 K's) gives Blue Jays boost after rotation whirlwind

TORONTO -- With all the talk on Tuesday about pitching labs, is there one available to clone Kevin Gausman?

Just hours after the Blue Jays optioned Opening Day starter Alek Manoah all the way back to their training complex in Dunedin, Fla., Gausman climbed the mound and gave the organization a moment to breathe again.

This is Gausman’s greatest gift. With a laid-back exterior that might trick you into thinking he’s something other than a fierce competitor and a thoughtful mind, the right-hander has the unique ability to exude calm while the world whizzes around him. The Blue Jays have already needed that too many times this season, but never more than in Tuesday’s 5-1 win over the Astros at Rogers Centre.

“He’s just always the same, which I can’t speak highly enough about,” said manager John Schneider. “It’s workmanlike. It’s professional. This is one of the best pitchers in the game.”

With Manoah going just one-third of an inning the night prior in a start that finally forced it all to come crashing down, the Blue Jays used six relievers to survive. That’s no problem for Gausman, though, who has topped 100 pitches in each of his past five starts, somehow managing to balance efficiency with a strikeout total that leads all American League pitchers and is tied for the MLB lead.

“It’s huge,” said Schneider. “Sometimes, a day like yesterday can put you in a bind for a couple of days. What Kevin did tonight kind of reset us a little bit. That’s what really good pitchers do, they understand the situation that they’re in. And he doesn’t put too much pressure on himself. It’s just always the same. He wasn’t trying to do more than he should have, but he really, really lined us up well going forward.”

Gausman’s 13 strikeouts over seven innings of one-run ball on Tuesday sat next to a zero in the walk column, which isn’t even surprising at this point. His 12.4 strikeouts-per-nine mark is the best we’ve seen from a Blue Jays starter in a single season, currently outpacing Robbie Ray’s 2021 Cy Young season (11.5) and Gausman’s own '22 season (10.6).

Just behind those? Roger Clemens’ back-to-back Cy Young seasons in 1997 and '98, two of the best individual seasons in club history by any player. Gausman is in rare company, and now that his batted-ball luck has taken a step back from “historically bad” to simply “bad,” he deserves to have his name mentioned in the first sentence of any Cy Young conversation this season, too.

His numbers are dominant any day, any year, but the context of Tuesday’s win is what makes this so much more important.

Manoah’s absence could be two weeks or two months. It could be two anything. The Blue Jays will put every resource imaginable behind Manoah, but a situation this unique doesn’t come with an easy blueprint or timeline. That means they’ll need to piece together a fifth starter, and while the recently recalled Bowden Francis is first in line, that line is a bit messy, and it could end up leading to an all-hands-on-deck approach.

The risk this creates is that Toronto will need its other four starters to be rock solid. One starter down, this team’s thin depth can find a way to handle. Two, it can’t.

That’s why Gausman’s ability to turn this into just another game is so crucial. And it’s not something a younger version of the 32-year-old would have handled nearly as well.

“I definitely had to learn that,” Gausman said. “When I was young, I definitely let innings snowball with emotions, and I felt like I was throwing way more strikes than I probably was. I maybe was a little chirpy towards the umpires. Every year, I gain experience. I actually think some of the [foreign substance] checking helps us talk to those guys a little more. Sometimes it helps to be nice to those guys.”

Until science catches up on cloning, of course, the Blue Jays have only one Gausman. His five-year, $110 million deal is already looking like one of the best moves in this front office’s tenure, and nights like Tuesday make it easy to envision Gausman on the mound in big games in October.

The Blue Jays need to get him there.

Months from now, it could be Manoah and Gausman together again, leading the rotation with two dramatically different personalities that both find their own ways to win. Until then, it will be Gausman giving oxygen to this organization every fifth day.