Last night in Toronto, the Blue Jays – with a bit of help from the Orioles bullpen – did a good job of spoiling the Major League debut of Kevin Gausman.
While the youngster was tagged with the loss, he pitched well enough to give his team a chance to win. Manager Buck Showalter pulled Gausman after the fifth inning and 89 pitches, though by the looks of it, Gausman wasn’t even close to tiring.
During the fifth inning, when Gausman surrendered two runs on two hits – an Adam Lind single and a J.P. Arencibia home run, both coming with two outs – he was still hitting the upper 90’s with ease.
A look at the following graphic from BrooksBaseball.net shows that “GasMan” was indeed still throwing gas despite approaching his 100th pitch.
Gausman was over 98 MPH with four different pitches in the fifth (and over 99 MPH with two) – the swinging strike three to Jose Bautista, a called strike, a ball, and the Lind single.
Unfortunately, the pitch to Lind got way too much of the plate, and Gausman, instead of getting strike three and ending the inning, saw his offering smacked for a single that extended the frame and brought Arencibia to the dish.
Of course, it takes much more than a triple-digit fastball to be successful in the majors; Gausman learned as much last night (not to suggest he didn’t already know that). His location was wavering a bit, and that resulted in some very hard-hit balls.
According to a tweet from FoxSports’ Ken Rosenthal, one scout blamed it on his overuse of his other stuff:
All I know is this – I can’t wait to watch the kid pitch again.
