This story was excerpted from Keegan Matheson's Blue Jays Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

Kevin Gausman is throwing the baseball where he wants, how he wants, whenever he wants to.  

The Blue Jays’ right-hander has opened the season with 31 strikeouts and no walks, showing especially in his last two starts that he’s capable of delivering ace-level outings.

Tuesday’s win over the Red Sox was the latest installment, as Gausman shut down Boston by allowing just one unearned run over six innings while striking out nine. Just like Robbie Ray last year, albeit with a different repertoire, Gausman is showing exactly what it looks like to pitch with confidence. That hasn’t always come easy.

“It’s been an eight-year process,” Gausman said. “I came into the league really young and was pretty scared the first time certain guys got in the box. You’ve been watching these guys play your whole life. It took me years to get over that. Now I feel like, if I can be the aggressor and pound the zone, then they’re more inclined to chase pitches out of the zone.”

Gausman has already set a new record for the most strikeouts (31) without a walk to start a career with a new team. He’s still a long way from Corbin Burnes’ all-time record of 58, set during his incredible start to the 2021 season, but another start or two could make this interesting.

This all starts with Gausman’s splitter. It’s one of the best pitches in Major League Baseball, and there aren’t many more valuable to an individual pitcher’s success. Playing off his fastball, this splitter leaves hitters guessing for a split-second -- which is more than enough -- then nosedives into the plate. It has to be a special brand of frustration for hitters.

With a fastball and splitter alone, Gausman is good. The jump from good to great comes from Gausman’s slider, which is emerging as a legitimate weapon after years spent lurking in the shadows.

Gausman has thrown his slider on 16 percent of pitches this season, a notable step up from the 6 percent range over the past two seasons. The simplest way to look at this is to recognize that, in a five- or six-pitch at-bat, an opposing hitter is likely to see one. No longer are they only worried about guessing wrong on a fastball only to have a splitter fall under their flailing bat. Now, they’re also considering the possibility that the pitch might snap across the plate in another direction entirely.

“That’s probably been one of my best pitches this year,” Gausman said last week in Boston. “I just feel good throwing it, and I feel confident throwing it to anybody, really. I’m never going to be a huge, high-percentage slider guy, but I’m fine with that. I have two other pitches that I can go to, so for me, it’s about figuring out when I’m going to throw that and going to a spot where, if I do throw a bad one, it’s not going to hurt me too much.”

Teams don’t hand out $110 million because they’re guessing. The Blue Jays have long coveted Gausman, and his 2.19 ERA to open the season shows exactly why.

With José Berríos alongside Gausman and the young Alek Manoah churning out wins, the top of this Blue Jays' rotation looks set for years to come.