BRADENTON, Fla. -- The ace is back just in time.

Kevin Gausman’s performance in the Blue Jays’ Spring Training finale on Monday puts him in position to potentially be ready for his first start of the regular season, which would allow the Blue Jays to dodge an IL stint for one of baseball’s best pitchers.

Even when it didn’t look like Gausman would be ready in time as he worked to rebound from shoulder fatigue earlier in camp, it felt so unnatural to be concerned about him. Gausman is the calm, the level, the human embodiment of “don’t worry about it, man.” Now, if all goes well over the next 24 hours, the Blue Jays won’t need to.

Gausman was turning hitters inside out, striking out seven Pirates over three-plus innings in Toronto's eventual 4-3 loss. The splitter was working. The heater was working. It was Gausman at his very best, and his timing couldn’t be better.

“I know what I need to do and the boxes I need to check daily to be right for when games matter,” Gausman said. “And that’s a couple of days away now. It’s unfortunate that this happened in spring and I kind of got pushed back a bit, but it seems like I’m not going to miss much time, so that’s good. If we need to build me up over my first two starts, that’s OK.”

Now, the Blue Jays wait for the morning. Everything Monday went as well as it could have, but there are still a few hurdles to clear before the Blue Jays set their Opening Day roster ahead of Thursday’s game against the Rays.

“He’s been feeling good and how he feels tomorrow will be just as important, just to know what the next few days look like for him,” manager John Schneider said. “We’re just looking for him to be his normal self today, then tomorrow, to be as normal as he could be feeling. That would be a really good thing for us.”

In a perfect world…
The Blue Jays would love to open the season with Gausman pitching fourth or fifth in the rotation, which would line him up with either Sunday’s finale in St. Petersburg or Monday’s opener in Houston.

This needs to be viewed holistically too. Games two, three and four of the season have first pitch times of 6:50 Friday, 4:10 Saturday and 1:40 Sunday, which creates some tight windows. If a starter has a short outing, things could snowball quickly in the bullpen. If Gausman only has 70-75 pitches to work with in his first outing, perhaps the opener in Houston would line up best, but the Blue Jays will consider dozens of factors here, including how this would schedule out over the next few weeks and the matchups it would create.

The simple path, though? If Gausman feels “normal” on Tuesday, he can throw his regular bullpen session later this week and be in position for an abbreviated debut. As much as the Blue Jays would love to have him out there on Opening Day, the opportunity to still get 31 starts from Gausman this season is a win.

Trickling down…
If Gausman hadn’t been ready for his first regular season start, Mitch White was the logical next man up. Now, White can slide into a bullpen role and, along with Trevor Richards, be ready to pick up the extra workload as Gausman builds up. That’s the easy part.

This gets more complicated when we look at Jordan Romano (right elbow inflammation) and Erik Swanson (right forearm tightness), the two most important relievers on this roster.

“It’s reasonable to say that they’re probably going to start on the IL,” Schneider said on Monday.

White should slide into one of those spots, while Nate Pearson and Zach Pop are 40-man arms being considered for the other job. Pop got off to a fine start in 2023 before a May hamstring injury derailed his season, while Pearson, the former No. 1 prospect, offers a shred of that upside that’s still so tempting to dream on.

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If there’s an X-factor in all of this, it’s Yariel Rodriguez, the Cuban right-hander who is still building up in camp and still represents a bit of a mystery, given that he didn’t pitch professionally in 2023. Schneider suggested Monday that it would be ideal to keep Rodriguez on a set schedule early in the year, which points away from having him yo-yo between the bullpen and Triple-A, but soon enough, there will need to be a role for the talented 27-year-old.