{"id":99294,"date":"2025-04-16T01:54:25","date_gmt":"2025-04-16T05:54:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=99294"},"modified":"2025-04-16T01:54:25","modified_gmt":"2025-04-16T05:54:25","slug":"blue-jays-kevin-gausman-improved-start-fastball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/04\/16\/blue-jays-kevin-gausman-improved-start-fastball\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Jays Ace Having an Improved Start to this Season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Kevin Gausman is having a solid start to his 2025 season, demonstrating a solid command of his fastball, his bread and butter pitch. Through four starts, he has a 2-1 record and a 2.49 ERA with 20 strikeouts and a 0.71 WHIP across 25 1\/3 innings. While it&#8217;s still early, he&#8217;s demonstrating an improved start compared to last season, where he illustrated some early struggles.<\/p>\n<p>His fastball has been dominant, and he&#8217;s been off to a strong start for the Blue Jays. He recorded six strikeouts against the Atlanta Braves, his former team. With the Blue Jays&#8217; win on Tuesday evening, Gausman has now recorded a win against all 30 MLB teams. The team he has beaten the most in his career is the Detroit Tigers. And what better way to do it than on Jackie Robinson Day? Gausman has established himself as one of the more reliable Blue Jays starters alongside Chris Bassitt, who will get the start to wrap up the series against the Braves.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-media-max-width=\"560\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">BlueJays double up Braves 6-3 on \ud83c\udf2d night<\/p>\n<p>Gausman W (2-1) 6H 2ER 6K<br \/>\nSantander 2-4 HR(2) 3RBI(6)<br \/>\nRoden 2-3 HR(1) 2RBI(4) \u2b50\ufe0f<\/p>\n<p>Little 1.0IP BB 2K<\/p>\n<p>Player of the game Kevin Gausman for his stout performance in a bounce back spot after yesterday\u2019s loss. <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/LightsUpLetsGo?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#LightsUpLetsGo<\/a> <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/W4NdogxkWG\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/W4NdogxkWG<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Blue Jays Avenue Podcast (@BlueJaysAvePod) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BlueJaysAvePod\/status\/1912326110114668787?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">April 16, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Blue Jays Ace Kevin Gausman Dominating with Fastball Early This Season<\/h2>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">With the win tonight, Kevin Gausman has now recorded a win against all 30 MLB teams.<\/p>\n<p>The team he has beaten the most: Tigers , 10x.<\/p>\n<p>(H\/T <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BonjourBoucher_?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@BonjourBoucher_<\/a>) <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/qP4bjVWUNU\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/qP4bjVWUNU<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 BlueJays Muse (@TORBlueJaysMuse) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/TORBlueJaysMuse\/status\/1912323185191559613?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">April 16, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Last season, he struggled early on, losing his first three decisions and the Jays losing four of his first five starts. But he was experiencing shoulder fatigue starting in spring training. While he didn&#8217;t land on the shelf, the shoulder fatigue played a part in slowing his workload to get ready for the start of the regular season in 2024. Ultimately, it impacted his end-of-season ERA (3.83) and strikeout rate (21.4%) compared to his first two seasons pitched with the Blue Jays. Overall, the Blue Jays&#8217; ace has been solid in the rotation. Toronto needs him to be dominant with <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/04\/14\/blue-jays-veterans-thumb-issues\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Max Scherzer<\/a> still on the injured list. So far, Gausman has been one of the Blue Jays&#8217; best starters to start the year, buoyed by decent run support.<\/p>\n<h3>Gausman&#8217;s Solid Fastball<\/h3>\n<p>This season, Gausman is returning to his old self and his dominant form. He&#8217;s demonstrating a solid command of the strike zone with his fastball. <span data-huuid=\"7496432047400532315\">The pitch is effective for him due to its ability to be both a set-up pitch and a strike-inducing pitch. In addition, it&#8217;s a sneaky pitch that keeps hitters perplexed at the plate. <\/span><span data-huuid=\"7496432047400529946\">He utilizes it in distinct ways, particularly by keeping it low. pumping in the fastball for strikes allows Gausman to set up his splitter.<\/span><span data-huuid=\"7496432047400531673\"> He uses low fastballs to get ahead in the count, leading to an increased chase rate this year (34.8 %). His fastball also leads to a high pop-up rate, and it is effective at inducing both called strikes and swinging strikes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>The Last Word<\/h3>\n<p>If Gausman can remain healthy this season, he will remain a dominant force in the rotation, which will be important for the Blue Jays. They are currently half a game behind the New York Yankees for first place in the American League East. They&#8217;ve been 5-5 in their last 10 games. With Gausman&#8217;s dominant strikeout ability, he could lead the pack in the Blue Jays rotation. Last season, he struggled with his timing and dealt with a decrease in velocity as well as inconsistency with his fastball and splitter early in the season. This year, he&#8217;s turning the tables, so far.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Photo Credit: \u00a9 Nick Turchiaro-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kevin Gausman is having a solid start to his 2025 season, demonstrating a solid command of his fastball, his bread and butter pitch. Through four starts, he has a 2-1 record and a 2.49 ERA with 20 strikeouts and a 0.71 WHIP across 25 1\/3 innings. While it&#8217;s still early, he&#8217;s demonstrating an improved start [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4831,"featured_media":99308,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1071],"tags":[4223,1331,79],"class_list":["post-99294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bluejays","category-mlb","tag-chris-bassitt","tag-kevin-gausman","tag-max-scherzer"],"modified_by":"Lewis Masella, Site Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4831"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99294"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99309,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99294\/revisions\/99309"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}