That’s a top-25 mark among qualified MLB starters. He also has a 23.8 percent strikeout-minus-walk rate — a stat that greatly values Gausman’s Blue Jays — which ranks sixth behind a string of absolute studs in Shane McClanahan, Gerrit Cole, Carlos Rodon, Aaron Nola and Corbin Burnes. But where Gausman has all of these guys beat — every guy in baseball, for that matter — is in FIP. As in independent pitching, a stat that measures a pitcher’s performance using results that are distracted by the defense played behind him. Think hits, walks, hits, home runs. Gausman’s FIP is 2.01, nearly a quarter lower than second place Rodon. And they are the only two eligible pitchers under 2.54. So a 3.15 ERA against a 2.01 FIP — a difference of more than a run. Only two other pitchers who have thrown at least 100 innings this season — a sample of 94 — have a larger variance. Patrick Corbin, whose ERA is 6.81 and FIP is 5.01. And Lucas Giolito, who has 5.14 and 4.08. Neither came close to Gausman’s league. How does this happen? Well, you get to hit a ton (Gausman has a top-10 strikeout rate at 27.7 percent). You don’t walk a lot (Gausman’s 3.9 percent walk rate ranks in the 96th percentile of MLB). You minimize home runs (Gausman only coughed up 7 over 134.1 innings pitched). And you get absurdly unlucky on balls in play (Gausman’s .373 average on balls in play is tops among qualifying starters in MLB, nearly 40 points clear of second-place JT Brubaker and soaring above his .289 MLB average) . It is the story of the Gausman era. Stretches of splendor interspersed with stretches of impossibly poor fortune. “Yeah, pretty much. Unfortunately,” Gausman said when asked if his season had been defined by bad luck. “It’s a shame to say that. But many pitches have been passed and hit. Too much weak contact has led to guys getting on base. I always base my exits on the contact I have. So it’s difficult on nights like tonight.” It’s hard to see Xander Bogaerts hitting a full-count heater straight into the dirt in front of home plate at 78.7 mph and pulling it off. A pitch hit with a launch angle of -50 degrees is a pretty good indication that a player is missing badly on a nasty, diving pitch. But that extreme angle also robbed the ball of any speed behind it as it rolled slowly toward Blue Jays third baseman Matt Chapman, who had no hope of an out at first. It’s tough when, four pitches later, Gausman threw a perfectly placed splitter that came off the end of Christian Arroyo’s bat at 65.2 mph and floated into center field. The ball was hit so softly that it rolled to a near-dead stop 119 feet from home as Bogaerts advanced to third. Two pitches after that, Arroyo fell to second with just the sixth stolen base of his career in six seasons as Danny Jansen made his carry behind the plate. It’s hard to see a Reese McGuire blast — exit velocity: 86.9 mph — falling just out of Teoscar Hernandez’s reach to right, forcing Bogaerts. It’s hard for a Bobby Dalbeck goalball single against the changeup to score Arroyo. Two runs and the hardest ball of the inning was by Dalbec at 91.2 mph. Things like this don’t just happen to Gausman. But Gausman has too much going on. “I try to focus on the contact I have. But obviously you want the results and the gentle touch. You just feel like you’re not getting hit. They don’t necessarily earn it. And it is, it is still a success. But there’s been a lot of ground balls that seem to find their way out there,” Gausman said. “All I can really focus on is making better pitches before that happens, you know? Knock a man out. That’s kind of where I am. A lot of the bad things that happened tonight, I could have done things earlier at AB to prevent that from happening.” That’s fair – Gausman wasn’t undone purely by bad luck. His fastball velocity was down 1.5 mph from season norm. His splitter was also slower than average. The Red Sox stole a pair of bases off his high leg. He hit some fastballs, like the one Tommy Pham singled in the third. And he didn’t complete some splitters, like the one Rafael Devers did in right to catch Pham four pitches later. But a .529 BABIP on the night certainly contributed, as it has all season. Rob Refsnyder started the fourth with a groundball single off the pitcher’s mound, then took off for second on an 0-2 count. Approaching the plate, McGuire cut a changeup on the ground in reverse, bouncing a dribbler into left field through where a displaced Chapman, who was running to cover Refsnyder’s attempted steal at second, had been standing a split second before. That set up a Dalbec sacrifice fly that scored Refsnyder from third. And even though Gausman made his third trip through the Boston order, walking the Blue Jays in the fifth in a tied game, it wasn’t a particularly difficult choice for interim manager John Schneider to lift him to 88 pitches. Gausman knew it too. He emptied the tank in that fifth, throwing three of his four hardest pitches of the night. “You know, going against average balls in play is tough. He was unlucky,” Snyder said. “He was a little tired today, I think. And some soft hits and things like that, Reese putting the ball in play with the runner moving there, kind of sums up his year.” Gausman’s decreased velocity, meanwhile, need not be a concern unless it becomes a trend in multiple outings. He is 24 years old and starting his season now. He deals with some things physically, as anyone in his position would. But he has pitched the Blue Jays in 30.2 innings of 2.64-ERA ball this month and still has one start. With or without his best fastball, Gausman found a way to overcome it. “Some days the velo comes naturally to me. But it wasn’t so easy today. When I needed it, it was there. But it took a little longer to get there, for sure,” Gausman said. “I’ve definitely felt better than I did now. But that’s part of it. I’ll take my time between outings, maybe tweak some things, give my body a little break. And hopefully five days from now I’ll feel much better.” Meanwhile, the Blue Jays pounded Kutter Crawford with four runs on 10 hits, which was good enough to match what the Red Sox got off Gausman. And the teams traded runs in the sixth thanks to a solo shot by Danny Jansen and a double by Jaren Duran that drove in Dulbeck, who reached on Beau Bisset’s two-out throwing error. The web of space and time came to an abrupt halt there, as the Blue Jays and Red Sox took turns burning scoring opportunities in a seventh inning that began on your sixth birthday and an eighth that ended on your college graduation. Bo Bichette reached second with one out in the top of the ninth, but was fouled. The Red Sox loaded the bases with nobody out in the bottom of the ninth against Jordan Romano, but Franchy Cordero struck out and Kike Hernandez grounded into a double-play against a five-run game. But the Blue Jays were able to scratch zombie runner Cavan Biggio in the top of the 10th with a couple of balls from John Schreiber. Schreiber made a contact play for second with George Springer at the plate, and Biggio executed a perfect slide just under the tag of Red Sox catcher Kevin Plawecki. That got Romano to come back for a second inning and push his pitch count to 28, to retire the team in order in the bottom and end things. The Blue Jays certainly had their chances to end the game much earlier than that, putting runners on in every inning except the second. And yet, they went 2-for-12 with runners in scoring position and left 13 on base. One of those nights. It’s not often you walk away from them with a win. And it’s not often you leave a seven-game road trip through Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park with a 6-1 record. “It was an incredible job from the bullfight. The offense is over. Cavan with the touch plays at third, getting it right and having a fantastic slide home. Everyone is literally contributing today. It was a really good game,” Snyder said. “It’s awesome. There’s not a lot of runway left in the season. So to go to New York and [Boston] and won both streaks and sweeps [the Red Sox] in a tough environment, it says a lot about our kids.” And Gausman’s night spoke volumes for his year. These things are hard to measure, but there can’t be a pitcher who was as unlucky as he was, right? To be sure, his odd season wasn’t all factors outside of his control. His speed fluctuated. It seemed to tilt at some point. But when he’s on, he’s really on. His peripherals are spectacular. the disgust of his actions is evident. A 3.15 ERA doesn’t happen by accident. Not even a FIP 2.01. And how good does Gausman’s season look without that big gap between them? What if some of those victimized shifts don’t get hit instead? What if the Blue Jays play more healthy defense behind him? What if a double play is completed here and a ball doesn’t leave the bag there? What if some of those flares landed awkwardly on blades of grass instead of centimeters? Who’s to say. It is one…
