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Toronto Blue Jays starting pitcher Kevin Gausman was one of the most highly rated prospects in baseball after being selected No. 4 overall by the Baltimore Orioles in the 2012 MLB draft out of LSU. He had one great season with the Orioles in 2016 when he recorded a 3.
9 WAR, but the start of his career was rather pedestrian. It wasn’t until 2021 with the San Francisco Giants , after stops with the Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds , that he truly began to realize his potential. He was an All-Star that year, parlaying his success into a massive contract with the Blue Jays in free agency.
The two sides agreed to a five-year, $110 million deal, which he lived up to for the first two seasons. Gausman finished ninth in the American League Cy Young Award voting in his first campaign with Toronto and followed that up with his second All-Star game appearance in 2023. He finished third in the AL Cy Young Award voting that year behind the winner, Gerrit Cole of the New York Yankees , and Sonny Gray of the Minnesota Twins .
Unfortunately in 2024, he began to show some decline in his performance. Gausman was still solid all things considered with a 106 ERA+ across 181 innings, but as Thomas Harrigan of MLB.com pointed out, some of his peripheral stats painted a not so pretty picture.
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as his K-rate dropped by nearly 10 percentage points from the previous season (31.1% to 21.4%).
His 4.71 expected ERA painted his campaign in an even more unflattering light, raising concerns about the possibility of further decline entering his age-34 season,” wrote Harrigan. Would his production continue slipping in 2025, losing his battle against Father Time, or would the two-time All-Star be able to regain the ace-like form he had shown previously? Thus far, this is a battle that Gausman, to the surprise of some people, is winning.
He has bounced back out of the gate in 2025, combining with Chris Bassitt as two of the more pleasant surprises in the MLB over the first month of the season. Through five starts and 31.1 innings, Gausman has a 3.
16 ERA with an ERA+ of 126 and 26 strikeouts. Encouragingly, his advanced stats are again starting to move in the right direction, hinting that this return to form is legitimate. “The righty has recorded a 3.
16 ERA and a 3.48 xERA through five starts in 2025, and his strikeout rate has even started to tick back up over his past three outings (29.3%),” Harrigan added.
Hot starts of a season fizzling out aren’t uncommon in the MLB, so it will be interesting to see if he can keep this form up. If he does, he could become a very popular target ahead of the trade deadline for contenders looking to bolster their rotation should the Blue Jays, who are 13-13 heading into play on April 26, struggle to find consistency and make a playoff push. Recommended Articles.
