Kevin Gausman still has the stuff that made him one of Toronto’s most trusted arms. The splitter still misses bats.
The four-seam fastball still sets the table. The strikeout rate is still there.
But the version of Gausman the Blue Jays are getting right now is paying a much steeper price when hitters do manage to put the ball in play.
That was on full display Tuesday against the Tampa Bay Rays. Gausman labored through the opening inning, needing 38 pitches to get through it and 44 just to work through the Rays’ lineup one time. He was out after 3.1 innings, charged with five runs, four earned, and by then the game had already slipped away.
Tampa Bay kept pouring it on after that, adding seven more runs against Toronto’s bullpen and finishing with 21 hits. It was the Rays’ seventh win in eight meetings with the Blue Jays this season.
The core issue with Gausman isn’t that hitters are suddenly squaring him up with ease on every pitch. His whiff rate has actually improved, moving from the 59th percentile to the 70th, and his strikeout rate remains a solid 24.7%. The problem is what happens when contact does come.
Opponents are pulling the ball more often against him this season. Gausman ranked in the 32nd percentile in Pull% in 2025, and he has jumped to the 63rd percentile this year. That shift matters because it has opened the door to more damaging contact, and his Pulled-HR% allowed has nearly doubled from last season.
Even with the underlying stuff still intact, the results have been less forgiving. Both left-handed and right-handed hitters have done more with their chances, and Gausman’s in-zone contact profile has stayed close to what it has been in past seasons. In other words, the bats aren’t missing him more often - they’re just doing more damage when they connect.
One of the more troubling signs is how often he’s falling behind early. Gausman is carrying his highest first-pitch-behind rate over the past five seasons at 33.4%, and that has helped produce his worst OPS allowed in those situations since 2021. Too many at-bats are starting with the hitter in control, and that’s a bad place for any starter to live.
Tuesday was a clean example of that dynamic. Gausman got 11 hitters to two strikes, but five of them still reached base. The Rays kept grinding out quality at-bats, and even though they had only nine hits that came as eight singles, they still did enough damage to bury Toronto.
The Blue Jays’ issues go far beyond one starter, but it’s hard to see a real turnaround without a better version of Gausman. His arsenal still gives Toronto reason to believe that version is in there. The concern is that the second half is already here, the Blue Jays are already chasing in the AL East, and the room for mistakes is shrinking fast.
If Toronto is going to make a serious push toward October, it needs Gausman to do more than miss bats. It needs him to keep the damage down when hitters finally make contact.
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The bigger problem has been the familiar core not carrying its weight, with offense sputtering and pitching depth thinned by injuries. Even the decisions that looked most consequential in the winter have not aged into the kind of easy scapegoat fans might want, which leaves the Blue Jays searching for a more immediate explanation for how a promising group ended up in this spot. [Read more 🡒]
Blue Jays Just Pulled Off A Draft Swing Fans Will Notice
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What makes this one stand out is how Toronto got it done. The club managed its draft pool with enough discipline to make the bonus work, leaning on savings from other picks to create room for Bricks agreement. For a team trying to stockpile catching talent without losing flexibility elsewhere, it was the kind of maneuver that says as much about the front offices planning as it does about the player himself. [Read more 🡒]