TORONTO — Most conversations about the Toronto Blue Jays’ rotation have centred around Max Scherzer and Shane Bieber in recent weeks, and so manager John Schneider was asked on Thursday morning if there’s a tendency to overlook what Kevin Gausman has done lately.
“He’s easy to overlook because he’s not the big personality that Max is, not that Biebs is a big personality, but Kev’s just been steady, man,” responded Schneider. “He’s been really, really good. He’s been exactly what we needed.”
The Blue Jays needed a strong performance on Thursday afternoon at Rogers Centre and Gausman certainly overdelivered on that. The right-hander was in dominant form, tossing a complete game in the Blue Jays’ 6-0 win over the Houston Astros at Rogers Centre.
The Blue Jays (84-62) took two of three from the Astros (79-68) and moved into a tie with the Detroit Tigers for the best record in the American League. Additionally, Toronto now sits 3.5 games ahead of New York in the AL East, with the Yankees set to host the Tigers later Thursday night.
Gausman’s previous start, last week in the Bronx, was arguably his best of the season. It was hard to imagine him topping that but the right-hander was somehow even better against the Astros.
The only hits he allowed came in the fourth inning, when Jeremy Pena and Carlos Correa reached base with singles. However, Gausman induced a flyout from Jose Altuve before punching out Jesus Sanchez to end the frame.
The right-hander issued one walk against nine strikeouts while boasting a spike in velocity. His fastball topped out at 97.6 m.p.h. and sat at 95 m.p.h., a hair above his season average of 94.4.
Meanwhile, the Blue Jays’ offence put runs on the board early against Astros right-hander Cristian Javier. George Springer led off the bottom of the first with an infield single and then scored when Nathan Lukes lashed a double to the left-field wall. Addison Barger added a double on a pop-up that fell in between a trio of Houston fielders and cashed Lukes to put the Blue Jays up 2-0.
Davis Schneider added to the lead in the second when he drove an up-and-in fastball from Javier over the left-field fence for a solo shot that marked his 11th home run of the season.
The left-fielder added a sacrifice fly in the fourth inning, cashing in Daulton Varsho, who led off the frame with a triple to right-centre field.
Prior to the game, Schneider revealed that outfielder Anthony Santander would begin his rehab assignment in triple-A, slotting into the Buffalo Bisons’ lineup as the designated hitter on Thursday evening. The plan is to have the switch-hitter DH for three games before getting reps during a few games in left and right field.
Schneider said that Santander is “going to be playing a lot,” and with only 10 games remaining on the Bisons’ schedule, time is of the essence for him to regain his timing on both sides of the plate. Santander has been sidelined since the end of May with a left shoulder issue and Schneider admitted that creates a hurdle for the outfielder as he tries to get up to speed to join a major-league club in a pennant race.
“You want to be fair to him. You don’t want to just put him in a scenario where he doesn’t have the best chance to be good,” said Schneider. “It’s not the hits, it’s kind of like, how is he swinging the bat? How hard he’s hitting the ball. How is he running all that kind of stuff? It’s not like you need to hit .400 in order to come back up, but I think we need to see kind of when Tony is at his best from an offensive standpoint pretty consistently.”
