DENVER — Back on June 19, a rough outing against the Arizona Diamondbacks left Kevin Gausman especially frustrated. The Toronto Blue Jays had a chance to sweep a three-game series that day, but the veteran right-hander fell behind early and couldn’t escape the fifth, leaving behind a 7-1 deficit in an eventual 9-5 loss. He’d also left his team in a hole in his previous outing, surrendering four runs in an eventual 8-0 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies, so demanding far better of himself, he got to working on fixing his fastball command — the primary issue he identified. “I’m primarily a two-pitch guy, so if one of those pitches isn’t hitting,” he explained, “I’m going to be a lot easier to game-plan against.”
The answer came in looking at his head movement and the way that led his fastball to miss the spots they were intended for. Typically, his head stays within a narrow three-inch range during his delivery, but in some outings, the variance was as high as 6.5 inches, causing his body to travel inconsistently down the mound after his leg kick. “That was me trying to do too much, trying to make a split move, trying to make a slider move,” he said. “Whereas when I keep my head there, I’m going to throw the ball in the zone.”
So, he focused on some physical cues to help him “stay within the door frame” as he came down the slope. He did dry work to repair the muscle memory, helping him keep everything aligned. The next start at Cleveland, he threw eight shutout innings of two-hit ball, beginning a six-start run in which he posted a 1.96 ERA over 36.2 innings.
And after a blip outing Friday against the Kansas City Royals, when he allowed five runs in six innings of a 9-3 loss, Gausman was back in charge Wednesday during a 20-1 obliteration of the Colorado Rockies, allowing one run on three hits over seven dominant innings as the Blue Jays completed a remarkably one-sided three-game sweep.
A three-run homer by Bo Bichette — extending his hit streak to seven games and giving him nine RBIs over the three games — put the Blue Jays ahead in the third inning, and they just kept pouring it on from there. They scored three in the fifth on a two-run Nathan Lukes triple and Tyler Heineman’s RBI single, four more in the sixth including Davis Schneider’s solo shot, two more in the eighth, one of them when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. went deep, and eight more in the ninth, three on Schneider’s second homer of the game, when catcher Austin Nola was pitching.
While improving to 68-48, the Blue Jays outscored the Rockies 45-5 and collected 63 hits, establishing new franchise records for most runs and hits a three-game series. They scored 40 runs and had 51 hits during a July 22-24, 2022 series at Boston.
The Rockies (30-84), seemingly destined to challenge the 2024 Chicago White Sox’s record of 121 losses, offer up a lot of good hitting, but after a 2-5 week at Baltimore and versus the Royals last week, the outburst is perhaps the reset the Blue Jays needed before a challenging week ahead.
After an off-day Thursday, they begin a three-game set at the defending World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers before returning home to host the Cubs and Rangers.
As good as the three days in Denver’s thin air were for the offence, they were similarly good for the pitching staff ahead of a potentially taxing three-game stretch.
Gausman, essentially pitching at home as a native of Centennial, Colo., threw at least seven innings for the sixth time this season. And while he did give up the game’s opening run when Ezequiel Tovar ripped a splitter that leaked back over the plate for an RBI double, he kept the Rockies under his thumb, striking out eight.
