Breaking Down Kevin Gausman's Pitch Arsenal

A look at Gausman's splitter, fastball, and slider after the starter reportedly signed with the Toronto Blue Jays

John Hefti-USA TODAY Sports

It's not official yet, but Kevin Gausman will be a Toronto Blue Jay in 2022.

Jays fans are familiar with José Berríos' curveball, enjoy Alek Manoah's various fastballs, and admire the endless arsenal of Hyun Jin Ryu. Now they have a new repertoire to peruse. 

Mainly a two-pitch pitcher, Gausman brings unique weapons to the Blue Jays with the best split-finger  in baseball, a plus fastball, and the occasional slider. We'll break down the $110 million pitch arsenal, with accompanying pitch GIFs courtesy of PitcherList, so check out their Gausman page, as well.

It may seem natural to start with Gausman's most-used pitch, the fastball, but we're gonna instead start with the nasty stuff:

Gausman's splitter was the eighth-most valuable pitch in baseball last year, per FanGraphs, and it's improved in each of the last three seasons. 

He threw more splitters than anyone else in 2021, dropping it in the zone for a strike but mainly using the weapon as a put-away pitch. Gausman drew the sixth-highest swinging strike rate on pitches out of the zone in 2021, and over 140 of Gausman's 227 strikeouts came via the split.

The ~84 MPH pitch drops, on average, three feet out of the righty's hand and the vertical movement on his signature pitch ranks among the best in baseball—lots of it occurring late. He uses the weapon almost equally against lefties and righties, and neither platoon hit above .150 on the splitter in 2021.

In 2020, opponents posted a -29 wRC+ against Gausman's diving pitch, and hitters own a sub-.300 OPS against the splitter in the last two seasons. For his career, Gausman induces a 55.4% ground-ball rate with the pitch and an absurd 22.6% swinging-strike rate. Even when the ball ends up outside the strike zone, opponents are still hacking over 40% of the time.

Gausman's success is tied to this splitter—in his best 2021 month (June), opponents hit just .019 against the split. In is worst (July), they hit .172.

“I just think it’s an outlier pitch,” Gausman told KNBR's Danny Emerman.

Gausman sits around 95 MPH on his four-seam fastball and throws the pitch just over half the time. It flashes some late arm-side run, allowing him to throw it in the zone over 65% of the time.

While the split-finger is Gausman's money pitch, his fastball is crucial in setting it up. He tunnels the split off his fastball, inducing awkward swings on the heater and catching opponents under the ball regularly. In 2021, Gausman's fastball led his arsenal with a 7.5% pop-up rate and 34.6 fly-ball rate.

One of Gausman's rare flaws on a pretty pristine baseball savant page is HardHit%. He can get smacked hard on the heater, allowing a 44.8% hard-hit rate on his fastball in 2021. For his career, 104 of Gausman's 158 allowed homers have come on the fastball.

Gausman really only uses the slider as the third offering to right-handed batters, and even still only threw it 10% of the time against them in 2021.

He throws the pitch outside the zone more than 55% of the time but drew just a 19.2% chase rate on his third pitch in 2021. By xBA, it was Gausman's worst pitch in 2021 (.307), and he's only posted an xBA below .300 with his slider in a season once.

However, when Gausman was struggling with the bite on his splitter at the end of 2021—part of his second-half struggles—he began mixing in the slider more and throwing it for strikes. In September, the righty allowed just an .162 xBA against the pitch.

H/T PitcherList, FanGraphs, Baseball Savant