'A strange one' for Gausman: Rare day with 0 K's

NEW YORK -- Kevin Gausman is the guy who strikes hitters out. That’s his thing.

His resurgence as one of baseball’s best starters over the past five years has relied on it. He’s the best of both worlds, a pitcher who can throw a starter’s innings with a reliever’s strikeout rate. Then, every once in a while, something strange happens.

Gausman didn’t strike out a single Mets batter in Friday’s 5-0 loss at Citi Field. It almost slipped under the radar, too. Gausman walked off the mound after 5 1/3 innings down only 2-0 thanks to a Pete Alonso home run on a pitch well out of the zone, so while the numbers look fine at a glance, they look completely unlike Gausman when you peer a little closer.

This marked just the fifth time in Gausman’s 331 career games that he’s been stuck with a “zero” in the strikeout category. The others include three quick, ugly starts and an early ejection from 2017. Friday was one of a kind, and Gausman’s five whiffs on 87 pitches were the 10th-fewest he’s had in a start.

“I was just behind everybody. I was battling to get back to 2-2,” Gausman said.

A performance like this still falls more in the category of “interesting” than “worrying,” given how strong Gausman looked through Spring Training and his sharp first outing back in Toronto, but it’s clear that Gausman still needs to get back to his identity. He’s the whiff king, the man with the splitter that turns big leaguers into fools.

“Every team’s different and every team’s going to have a different approach, but it’s about figuring that out in the first two innings. More than anything, I just have to get back to pounding the zone,” Gausman said. “I only get my swings and misses when I’m ahead in the count. That’s when they’re going to chase the split more often. When I’m behind in the count, they’re not going to do that.”

Strikeouts are what Gausman and the Blue Jays’ coaching staff highlighted going into 2025. Even though he wasn’t always working with his best stuff in ‘24, Gausman was able to get to a 3.83 ERA on will and talent alone. That’s a good season, but for Gausman to be the great pitcher everyone knows he can be, it’s about strikeouts. A year ago, his strikeout rate was just 8.1 K/9. The year prior, when Gausman finished third in AL Cy Young Award voting, it was 11.5 K/9.

Gausman’s 237 strikeouts that season (2023) are the fourth-most in Blue Jays history, trailing only the 1997-’98 run of Roger Clemens (292, 271) and Robbie Ray’s dominant ‘21 (248). What do those three seasons have in common? Cy Young, Cy Young, Cy Young.

The 34-year-old pitches one way. Typically, that’s all he needs. Yes, he’s worked on a slider that has him excited and there are always some little wrinkles from year to year, but Gausman is a pitcher with a defined identity on the mound. That’s what makes starts like Friday’s so curious. We’ve seen a handful of times over his years in Toronto, too, when an opposing team will really hone in on his splitter, but nine times out of 10, Gausman’s version of baseball wins.

Juan Soto captures this well, even if Gausman has been on the wrong end of some of those at-bats. Coming into Friday, Soto had gone a career 8-for-15 against Gausman … with 12 walks. Gausman got Soto both times Friday, a pop fly and a ground out.

“With him, I just go with my strengths. I’m going to pitch up and throw splits down,” Gausman said. “It worked today. It doesn’t always work against him. He’s one of the best in the world. You definitely try to do some different things, but I’m not the guy that does that.”

Gausman captures himself well, too. When he’s struggling, there’s no need for him to invent a new pitch. That’s not his game and he hasn’t needed to, at least not in this era of his career.

That’s why a start like this can be called, as manager John Schneider put it, “a strange one.” Gausman can be good without his best stuff, but he crosses that line back to being a truly great MLB starter when he’s missing bats and striking out more than a batter per inning. Friday afternoon in Queens was just a strange, rare glimpse of what it looks like when that doesn’t happen.