This 34-Year-Old Starter Is Turning His Season Around In The 2nd Half
A Blog By Tobey
The Toronto Blue Jays currently hold a multiple game lead over the American League East with a 74-54 record at the time of writing this. A big part of that has been due to their starting pitching, which has in many ways exceeded expectations at various points of the season. Kevin Gausman is one of those arms. At 34-years-old, he’s using the second half of the 2025 season to turn his year around for his first place ball club.
Gausman has been a workhorse for Toronto since joining the club back in 2022. He’s had back to back 180+ IP seasons, posting an 11.53 K/9 back in 2023. After an underwhelming 2024, he’s looking like he’s trending back to that 2023 type of production here in the later half of 2025.
In 25 starts so far this season, Gausman’s production’s looked like the following:
147.2 IP
3.78 ERA
3.78 FIP
8.65 K/9
.209 BAA
1.06 WHIP
72% LOB%
Decent production but it doesn’t necessarily tell you the full story of how he’s been in both the first and second half. Here’s his production but split between the first and second half.
(1st Half Data L, 2nd Half Data R)
IP: 109.2 | 38.0
ERA: 4.19 | 2.61
K/9: 8.53 | 9.00
FIP: 3.89 | 3.46
WHIP: 1.16 | 0.79
BAA: .228 | .162
LOB%: 69.7% | 82.6%
While significantly less innings than the first half, the data has shown he’s been much better throughout this second half. Would that production level out given the same amount of innings? Maybe, but let’s say he had a better month of June where he didn’t post a 5.46 ERA and rather a 4.00 ERA? That production across the board looks a lot better.
We’d seen flashes of Gausman doing this in the first half, with a 2.81 ERA and .215 BAA in the month of May. Now so far through the second half, he’s showing more consistency on the mound. Since June 26th, Gausman has gone a minimum of 5.0 IP in every start.
When we look at his advanced profile, it’s noticeably very average in many categories. His xStats and velocity numbers like Fastball Velo and AvgEV are both around middle of the pack. His swing-and-miss numbers are what’s been best about his profile, with his Whiff and K% being ranked in 60-62nd percentiles.
Data: Baseball Savant
He’s excelled at getting chase this season, with that being his best ranking in the 81st percentile. Besides that, Gausman has shown this year to not get a great amount of ground-ball contact, but has managed to still post decent production through above average swing-and-miss metrics.
Now let’s dive into his pitching and arsenal a bit more. In 2025, Gausman has a three-pitch-mix featuring a 4-Seamer, Split Finger, and Slider that are released at a 37 degree arm angle. Fastball sits just 0.7 mph under the RHP AVG, while his Split and Slider sit well below the RHP AVG velo.
Image: Baseball Savant
There are some differences between his pitch mix now than just a year ago in 2024. In 2024, Gausman had four pitches to throw instead of three. We saw him throw a sinker about 6% of the time. This pitch got crushed at a .275 BA and .500 SLG.
Gausman went back to three pitches where he is back to throwing his Slider nearly 10% of the time like he did back in 2023. It’s gotten hit around a good amount this year however, with a .33 BA and .545 SLG. This has only resulted in 1 HR given up on the Slider surprisingly.
The 4-Seamer has given up most damage, but that’s not surprising. While hitters have slugged under .400 vs. the 4-Seamer, Gausman conceded 12 homers using the heater. With 54.3% usage, again it’s not very surprising.
The Split Finger has always been good for him and this year is no different on increased usage. This season, hitters have a .172 BA and .299 SLG, with a near 40% Whiff%. It’s been Gausman’s best put-away pitch this season.
Now let’s look at how effective the pitch-mix has been in the second half of the season. The MLB second half officially started on July 18th. When we set a time period of July 18th to now, here’s how each pitch has been statistically.
Data: FanGraphs
Fastball (316 Pitches)
.140 AVG
.310 OPS
5.5% BB%
19.8% K%
1 HR
.184 wOBA
24 wRC+
97.2 maxVel
28.8% GB%
5.1% SwStr%
Split Finger (183 Pitches)
.189 AVG
.732 OPS
.176 BABIP
4.9% BB%
43.9% K%
4 HR
.307 wOBA
108 wRC+
88.7 maxVel
45% GB%
24% SwStr%
Slider (58 Pitches)
.250 AVG
.500 OPS
0.0% BB%
16.7% K%
0 HR
.221 wOBA
48 wRC+
86.3 maxVel
70% GB%
13.8% SwStr%
The Split Finger has given up two thirds of its entire season's HR total in the second half, but has still been effective at getting swing-and-miss. Both the 4-Seamer and the Slider have been solid in the second half, limiting hitters to a sub-50 wRC+. Again it’s less than 40 IP, but the stuff looks solid across a good consistent stretch.
It’ll be interesting to see how the stuff plays out for the remainder of the season. It’s been a great second half so far for Kevin Gausman, and with the Blue Jays looking to make a push for a World Series this year, he’ll be a crucial part of that pitching staff come October. If he stays this way until then, the Jays are going to be hard to beat.