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Yes and no, Kevin Gausman said. Sure, there’s a feeling of trying to set the bar and then raise it, and then raise it again, and throw it up to a ceiling that they still haven’t touched. Each starter tries to pitch better than the last. But no, there is not a light rivalry among the Giants’ rotation.
“We’re definitely in each other’s corners and we watch every bullpen [session] in between the starts,” Gausman said after the Giants beat the Reds, 4-0, on Wednesday in Cincinnati. “I just think we have a good thing going on, and I just think we’re pounding the zone and being the aggressor towards all these teams.”
If there were a competition, there’s a case to be made Alex Wood is leading the pack with a 1.75 ERA. But he missed the beginning of the season and has relied upon the bullpen in a few of his victories. Maybe Anthony DeSclafani is the most well-rounded pitcher thus far, able to throw five different offerings that he has ridden to a 2.03 ERA in nine games.
But as Curt Casali pointed out in spring training, the Giants view Gausman as their ace, and he has only underlined that title through his first nine starts.
He was excellent for really a ninth time, pitching six scoreless innings even without his best stuff against the Reds, the same team that picked him up and tried him out of the bullpen after he flamed out of a starting gig with Atlanta in 2019. The Giants loved the stuff and have helped him turn it into results that have not dipped in two seasons. His six innings at Great American Ball Park matched his lowest innings output from a start this season.
He typically does it with mid-to-high 90s fastballs, but he did not have them for the most part: His four-seamer averaged 93.3 mph, more than a full tick down from his normal fastball. He typically does it with a splitter that sometimes renders a third pitch meaningless, it drops so precipitously, but it was not its sharpest. And so he mixed in an offering that is sometimes forgotten about, his slider, and threw it nine times, without the Reds putting one in play. They swung at five and missed five times.
When it’s not one excellent offering that he has working, it’s another.
“It’s a pitch that I throw pretty rarely, to be honest,” Gausman said after he, Zack Littell, Jake McGee and Tyler Rogers combined to shut out a potent Reds lineup. “To have a good feel for it straight out the gate, it was nice and I thought Buster [Posey] did a great job of calling a good game.”
Gausman excelled last season while primarily throwing to Chadwick Tromp, Tyler Heineman and Joey Bart, and while he only praised them, there is not a second Buster Posey.
What has stood out to a catcher who has caught some pretty impressive pitchers is that Gausman can go to any pitch in any count.
“That’s the game we’re playing today,” Posey said over Zoom after his bases-clearing double in the ninth provided Rogers a cushion. “They have to be able to throw breaking balls in 2-0, 3-1 counts, be able to command the fastball. He’s done a great job of using the fastball differently as well. He commands it down at times and then uses it as a carry pitch up.”
When he needed a fifth-inning strikeout after a leadoff double to Tucker Barnhart, the first hit of the day for the Reds, he went to a fastball to strike out Kyle Farmer. When he needed a ground ball to get out of a first-and-second jam in the frame, he used a splitter to induce a double-play ball from Jonathan India. Opponents are now 1-for-29 this season against Gausman with runners in scoring position, the 30-year-old with another level when he wants one.
That strikeout to Farmer, by the way, was his seventh of eight on the day and the 1,000th of his career. It started in Baltimore, who made him a No. 4 overall pick, and had some highs and lows in a career that became well-traveled. He’s been riding this high with the Giants and has turned a corner.
“To me at least, I think 1,000 strikeouts sounds like a huge, unobtainable number,” Gausman said, “so it’s kind of cool that I got there. But now it’s all right, we start a new list and try to get to 2,000.”
Gabe Kapler has never said that McGee is his closer, and the struggling lefty was used in the eighth while Rogers got the ninth.
McGee was pitching for a second straight night, which Kapler would rather not do, and faced the bottom of the Cincinnati lineup while the generally more-reliable Rogers saw the top. McGee sailed through needing just eight pitches, while Rogers put a couple on base but escaped unharmed. The Giants’ late-game decisions are made more with matchups than specific innings in mind.
“These guys are team players and are working as a team to take down the eighth and the ninth inning right now,” Kapler said.
