Kevin Gausman is about to break out. Stop me if you've heard this before
If you’re like me, you’ve kept one eye on Kevin Gausman over the last half decade as you waited, hoped and expected him to turn into the stud that made him the 4th overall pick back in 2012. Instead of turning into a stud he has slowly transitioned from top prospect, to struggling rookie, to post-hype sleeper, to average starter and now all the way down to the undesirable tag of boring veteran.
Going into 2020 the yearly reason to keep an eye on Gausman was centered around him finally going to a pitcher friendly park, Oracle Park in San Francisco. Well he’s four starts into the season and his pedestrian ERA(4.05) might make you think there is nothing to see here. Not looking deeper would be a mistake because he’s had a very difficult schedule (@LAD, SDP, @COL, @LAD) and he’s also shown an underlying skill improvement that has me excited for what could be the best season of his career.
Strikeouts and Walks
Without fail, the first thing I go to when looking at a pitcher’s stat page is his strikeout and walk numbers. I always look at K/9 and BB/9 even though I know that K% and BB% is a better version of the same thing. I’ve been trying to break that habit for years, and it’s just not going to happen. If you have the same habit as me then your eyes popped when you went to Kevin Gausman’s page after his last start against the Dodgers. He’s currently rocking a career high 10.35 K/9 and a career low 0.90 BB/9.
His career K/9 is 8.36, which is about average over that time frame. A guy with Gausman’s stuff and pedigree should not have an average strikeout rate. Last year we finally got a glimpse of Gausman striking guys out at a high rate but much of that came after moving to the bullpen. It remained to be seen whether that growth would stick as a starting pitcher.
To get a better look, let’s break Gausman up into three buckets. One representing a big sample of innings before converting to a reliever for a few months last year. This is baseline Gausman. The next two buckets represent his stint as a reliever and then his numbers so far in 2020, respectively.
As a reliever last year, Gausman had a 11.95 K/9 backed up by a ridiculous 19.8% swinging strike rate(11.6% is average for relievers). Those are the kind of numbers that made people think he’d be a reliever the rest of his career. But the Giants wanted him as a starter and Gausman wanted to start so they agreed on a one year, $9 million deal.
He hasn’t kept all those gains but he’s kind of split the difference on the person he was before moving to the bullpen and the person he was after. Now obviously the sample sizes on these last two buckets are incredibly small. That’s why we need to do a bit more work to see if he is doing anything else to help him achieve those ridiculous strikeout and walk numbers.
The Glove Tap
Gausman has some visual differences in his motion to the plate that could be helping him make a more consistent delivery. In 2019 he had one start at Oracle Park and he’s already made one start there in 2020 so I used those two games to allow me to break down his windup without having different stadium cameras be an issue.
As he lifts his legs, he loads his hands differently. There’s a slight separation between his hand and the glove. Then he brings them back together again before driving to the plate. This may seem subtle but it’s clearly an intentional change. He does it constantly this year and it was nonexistent in 2019.
Perhaps this new tick in his delivery is forcing him to be more deliberate before driving to the plate. Similar to a hitter’s leg kick, something like this glove tap can be a useful timing mechanism for a pitcher trying to keep their mechanics in-line and consistent.
One way we can see the results of this new delivery tweek is in his release point chart. Here’s his 2019 release points next to his release points from this year.
2019 Release Point
2020 Release Point
The spread is tighter this year. Again it’s only been 4 games but this shows me he currently has a repeatable motion to the plate. The command speaks for itself, with only two walks on the year.
Speaking of command. Eno Sarris has a fancy metric called Command+ over at the Athletic. In short it’s a metric that looks at how often a pitcher throws a specific type of pitch in the location that is best for that pitch type. Currently it’s showing Gausman as having 5% better command than last year and 12% better command than league average.
Here are some pitch clips to look at from this season. Take note of the glove tap.
Velocity Increase
Perhaps I’m burying the lede here but Gausman is also throwing harder this year. In fact, in his last start against the Dodgers his average fastball velocity was 97.1 MPH. That’s the hottest fastball he’s had in a game since all the way back in 2013 when he was a rookie. Even as a reliever last year he never averaged more than 96.0 in an outing.
Let’s go back to the three Gausman buckets we had earlier. And this time look at the velocity of his fastball and splitter.
You may be wondering how much we should care about a 0.9 MPH increase on his fastball velocity. So far in Gausman’s career every little bit of velocity has helped. Using Baseball Savant’s new Illustrator tool I was able to get Gausman’s wOBA allowed numbers broken down by pitch type and velocity.
Final chart, I swear.
Nothing in that chart should be too shocking. It’s reassuring that more oomph on a fastball makes it harder to hit. Gausman’s fastball has been below average in his career(.353 wOBA) so it’s nice to see that he is currently doing something that is making it harder to hit(.293 wOBA this year). You may also notice the ratio of those sample sizes. This year 40% of his fastballs are crossing that magic threshold of 96 MPH. Whereas over the last few years he was only reaching that mark 24.7% of the time.
Here’s a 99 MPH fastball, on the black, as your reward for making it this far.
Conclusion
As we wrap up, it’s important to remember who Gausman is. I’m not expecting him to win the Cy Young because of this change. He is still a starting pitcher with a limited arsenal. He doesn’t have some fancy new pitch. You’ll notice I never said the word slider until right now. That’s because his slider has always been forgettable and that still seems to be the case. He lives on his elite splitter and so far that’s been enough to make him an average starter.
But this glove tap is still interesting. It has the potential to help all of his pitches.
If the glove tap is giving him a more consistent and unified drive to the play then perhaps it’s allowing him to tap into some new velocity. What a great alteration that would be; better control and more velocity! Possibly too good to be true. But we are three weeks into the weirdest season of our lives and a glove tap turning into better command and velocity wouldn’t even chart on a list of 2020’s Craziest Things. So I’m officially putting two eyes on Gausman the next time he takes the mound.