2 weeks Ago By [email protected] (Mike Wilner)
They say everything is bigger in Texas, and while that old saw proved accurate — where a ground ball during infield practice on Wednesday turned into a season-ending broken finger — that it didn’t also follow with Kevin Gausman. The right-hander was brilliant in what was scheduled to be his penultimate start of the season, at the hands of the Rangers at Globe Life Field on Thursday. Gausman picked up his 13th win of the season by retiring the first 13 batters he faced before walking Nathaniel Lowe in the fifth inning.
He struck out the next two to end the frame (his fifth and sixth strikeouts of the day) but, after throwing only 58 pitches, could not answer the bell for the sixth. The 33-year-old Gausman is not working with any limitations — his 175 innings pitched this season are 10 fewer than last year — and the extent to which he cruised through those first five innings gave no indication that he wasn’t going to be able to get a lot deeper, and Given that, and the fact that this has been and continues to be the season from hell for the last-place Jays, it was easy to jump to the worst-case scenario: Gausman couldn’t continue because he’s hurt. It’s his arm.
His season is over and he’s going to miss most of next season, too! He was taken out while throwing a no-hitter, after all. As alarmist as that sounds, it wasn’t a completely irrational conclusion to draw. After all, we found out just this week that and may not be ready to start next season on time.
is getting his knee scoped and will be shelved for at least a month. And there was Bichette’s pre-game mishap that limited his return from a calf injury to just one game before the curtain came down on his season. Fans were on pins and needles for a couple of innings until the Jays announced that Gausman had been removed with lower back tightness.
Now, being 33 with a creaky back is no fun, to be sure. But if he needs them, Gausman has five or six months to get right before things start to matter again. If he has to miss a start against the Miami Marlins next weekend in a season-ending series that will be utterly meaningless, that’s fine.
Gausman’s backache enabled the Jays to get their first look at Dillon Tate, a 30-year-old right-hander picked up on waivers from Baltimore earlier this month. The fourth pick in the 2015 draft was let go by the Orioles after not bouncing back well from elbow and forearm issues that caused him to miss all of 2023, but in the three seasons prior he had posted a sparkling 1.08 WHIP over 141 relief appearances.
In his Jays debut, Tate, a minor-league teammate of Erik Swanson in the Yankees system, needed only a dozen pitches to retire the side in order. He threw just three fastballs, getting Carson Kelly to whiff on a sweeper down and away and having Marcus Semien swing through a changeup for his two strikeouts. With the team needing to rebuild the bullpen in the off-season, they’re looking at as many arms as they can down the stretch.
Tate was called up to replace Luis Frias, a waiver claim who had two disastrous outings among four total appearances. Opportunities have also been given to the since-dispatched Jose Cuas and Yerry Rodriguez, with righties Brett de Geus, Nick Robertson and Emmanuel Rodriguez all having been taken off waivers this month but still waiting their turn in the minors. Tate could easily wind up being the most (and likely only) significant future contributor of that entire group.
His old pal Swanson pitched a perfect eighth, part of a resurgence that has seen Jordan Romano’s one-time setup man post a 2.70 ERA since the all-star break. In between Tate and Swanson, the no-hit drama came to an end when Josh Smith lined Génesis Cabrera’s first pitch into right-centre for a single to lead off the bottom of the seventh.
Smith was erased trying to stretch it into a double by a terrific throw from Nathan Lukes. The Jays missed loads of opportunities to put the game away early, going 0-for-10 with runners in scoring position over the first five innings, and squeaked out a pair of runs on a Lukes sacrifice fly and an error. They remedied the situation by not putting any more runners in scoring position the rest of the way, adding on runs with Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
‘s 29th and 30th home runs of the season. The slugger is up to 99 RBIs with nine games to go..
