How Gausman’s re-introduction of a sinker could make him more dangerous
TORONTO — Teoscar Hernandez should know Kevin Gausman’s arsenal well at this point.
Teammates in 2022, Hernandez had an up-close look at a season that landed Gausman on several Cy Young ballots, with a 3.35 ERA and even stronger underlying metrics. He’d also faced Gausman eight times before they were teammates and six more times in 2023. Gausman is also primarily a two-pitch pitcher, leaning on an elite split-finger fastball and a traditional four-seam fastball more than 85 per cent of the time.
Hernandez should have had a good idea of what to look for.
But on April 28, Gausman caught him off-balance with something new: A two-seam fastball, or “sinker.”
Hernandez loves to hit pitches on the inner half of the plate and tried to jump all over an 0-1 offering that — if you know Gausman’s profile and were sitting on a fastball — was headed for his sweet spot. This pitch, though, broke back in toward the right-handed Hernandez, with an estimated 15 inches of run to Gausman’s (right) arm side. Hernandez nearly lost his footing adjusting to the late movement, fouling it into the dirt of the batter’s box.
Gausman had gotten away with a poorly placed fastball in their first meeting that day — Hernandez roped a hard-hit liner right to Daulton Varsho in centre — but in both of Hernandez’s at-bats, he swung at an 0-0 pitch on the inner half, as he’s wont to do. If there was a time to throw a rare two-seamer that can move strike-to-ball off the inside corner, he’d primed Hernandez for it perfectly. Up 0-2, Gausman struck Hernandez out on his trademark splitter the very next pitch.
That was the 17th two-seamer Gausman has thrown this year, a very low 3.5 per cent of his pitches. It’s a pitch that Gausman used to throw in his early years with the Orioles, firing 168 of them over 2015-17, per data from Baseball Savant. That same pitch-tracking data says that Gausman went away from the sinker ever since, not throwing a single one from 2018-23. (Gausman lightly disputes this but estimates “99 per cent” of his fastballs in that time were of the standard variety.)
So why bring it back now?
Gausman is in an interesting position as one of the league’s foremost users of the splitter. Around baseball, more pitchers are trying to throw the pitch, and those who already threw it are throwing it a bit more. This was an even larger trend in spring training, but selection bias has limited the pitch’s growth, as it’s very difficult to master and some of the pitchers who tried adding it to the repertoire couldn’t get comfortable enough to use it in real games (yet, at least). Meanwhile, it’s been Gausman’s primary weapon for his entire career, throwing it more than any pitch other than his fastball and generating a ton of swing-and-miss, particularly since joining the Blue Jays.
You could understand if Gausman stayed the course with the fastball-splitter combination and the occasional slider. After all, if everyone else is trying to throw more of his best pitch, and it’s a pitch that hitters around the league really struggle with, there’s not an acute argument to change things up.
Still, being primarily a two-pitch pitcher puts a lot of pressure on execution, tunnelling to disguise which pitch is which as long as possible, and smart sequencing to keep hitters off-balance. We’ve seen teams try to lay off anything low to avoid chasing the splitter, requiring Gausman to lower the level of his fastball, which can alter the effectiveness of how the splitter and fastball play off each other out of his hand. After throwing fewer fastballs over his first few starts than he had at any point as a Blue Jay to start the year, Gausman threw nearly a career-high rate of fastballs against the Dodgers last week.
There will never be an equilibrium point of pitch usage, and so Gausman has to stay diligent keeping hitters uncomfortable with more than just the nastiness of his splitter.
“I think that’s the million-dollar question. You’re trying to make the adjustment before you have to make the adjustment,” Gausman said. “You obviously want to pitch to your strengths. But in this game, you’re always kind of having to evolve. You see the league change. As you do something really well, they kind of try to do something to be able to kind of check that box off of their scouting report, and so you’ve got to be able to kind of throw something in there that they don’t know what’s coming.”
A two-seamer also makes sense as a complementary offering given what the splitter does well. One of the reasons the splitter is so effective around baseball, other than that hitters don’t see a lot of them, is that it’s the most “split-neutral” pitch in the league. In 2023, left-handed hitters actually hit slightly worse against splitters from right-handed pitchers than right-handed hitters did. Whereas a slider or sweeper can be dangerous to throw righty-to-lefty, a splitter is an excellent weapon against opposite-handed hitters.
There are various types of sinkers, but generally speaking, it’s on the other end of the platoon spectrum — it’s going to be most effective against a same-handed hitter. A righty throwing a two-seamer to a lefty risks the run on that pitch guiding the ball right into a lefty’s bat path. Throw it to a right-handed hitter and you’re likely to get far fewer barreled balls and a lot more grounders.
“If I have a certain righty and I feel like they have a hole in, then I definitely want to exploit that,” he told Sportsnet. “So, definitely want something that’s going to move more in to them than rise like my four-seam.”
A two-seamer, then, gives Gausman an extra option in the more common matchups against right-handed hitters.
It’s also not far from a splitter mechanically. The splitter has an extreme grip difference (hence the name split-finger fastball), but the way Gausman is trying to manipulate the seams of the ball for spin is very similar.
“My two-seam is essentially just a normal two-seam, and that’s how I throw my split,” Gausman said. “My split has a two-seam spin, so you would think that they would play really well off each other. I haven’t thrown it well enough, or even enough, to tell you that they play exceptionally well off each other.”
His splitter is “a slow two-seam,” in his eyes, and the amount of horizontal movement he’s gotten on the small sample of sinkers was roughly league-average, not bad for a rarely used new-ish pitch. (They did not have a lot of downward movement, which may be why Gausman says he hasn’t thrown it well enough.) His former teammate, Alex Cobb, used that combo effectively for years, basically replacing his four-seam fastball with a full-time sinker to go alongside his splitter. Even if that’s not in the plans, “I know how effective it can be.”
The situations in which Gausman has used the two-seamer this year are instructive. Hernandez is a batter he knows well, who has seen him a lot, and who can be particularly aggressive on inside fastballs; he’s a natural target for a fooled-you two-seamer. Gausman also used it against the Yankees, on April 17, and the Royals, on April 23.
The Yankees are a notoriously patient team and have swung at Gausman’s splitter less than any regular opponent except the Twins during his time with Toronto. It was also their second time seeing Gausman in April. Throwing a wrinkle in against a team that will lay off anything low in the zone, enticing bad swings on pitches a little higher up, could be helpful. The results were mixed, as Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton were able to lay off of a couple. Of the 10 he threw that game, he generated a pair of groundouts, a swinging strike, and a few fouls, and none of the seven swings he generated went for hits.
The Royals present an alternative challenge as one of the most aggressive teams in the league. They allowed Gausman to go deeper into that start with efficient pitch usage because they came out hunting any early fastball. It stands to reason there, too, that the occasional two-seamer when they’re looking for early four-seamers could be helpful. The pitch wasn’t as effective that day, generating three balls, two fouls, and a hard single from Maikel Garcia.
“(Pitching coach) Pete (Walker) is really good at being able to recognize what an offence is trying to do against you,” Gausman said. “I think, too, you go into certain games and you don’t know who you’re going to be until the second inning, right? Some games you just have an invisi-fastball and whatever fastball you’re throwing that day’s just not getting beat. Other days, every fastball you throw is getting hit hard. So kind of being able to adjust on the fly.”
The point isn’t necessarily to have it be a wipe-out pitch, or even a high-volume one. Against a right-handed hitter with a weakness on the inside part of the plate, against a team that’s looking for a particular fastball or pattern of fastball-splitter, or against a team he’s seen a lot of, another option for Gausman could be helpful.
Gausman similarly toyed with a sweeper briefly in 2023, throwing 18 of them before moving away from it for good. There is value in playing around with different pitches, grips, and types of spin, too, even if you’re not spending an off-season using high-tech cameras to redesign your pitches like some do.
Gausman’s 2024 Pitch Locations
“I like to play catch, and I like to throw everything,” Gausman said of his off-season work, or playing catch with Chris Bassitt. “I mean, I’ll throw a sweeper, I’ll throw a cutter, I’ll throw a sinker, I’ll throw a one-seam. I really like to do that. I’m not gonna go out there and throw four sweepers in a row in a game. That’s just not me. But I think it teaches you pitchability, learning how to manipulate a ball, obviously that’s what our craft is. So whereas I might not take it into a game, I think it still benefits me from the feel aspect of being able to do it. And if I ever need to throw a sweeper, I’ve got it.”
The two-seamer sounds like a pitch he’s more comfortable with and could have a more regular place in his repertoire, even if it’s as a complementary offering to help keep hitters off the fastball-splitter combo.
While you might not see it a ton this weekend against a young Nationals team that hasn’t seen a lot of splitters and is not particularly disciplined as a group, it fits well alongside Gausman’s current fastball-splitter-slider combination, if he can maintain a good feel for it.
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