BALTIMORE — Kevin Gausman sidled up to John Schneider when the Baltimore Orioles brought in Jacob Webb on Monday night and told his manager that he was ready to hit if needed. The Toronto Blue Jays ace had faced the right-handed reliever before, delivering a pinch-hit, walk-off sacrifice fly against him in the 11th inning of a 6-5 San Francisco Giants win over Atlanta on Sept. 17, 2021, and he was down to try, or at least pretend to try, again.
“He was wanting to go on-deck and try a little scare tactic on Webb,” Schneider joked Tuesday, shortly before the Blue Jays and Orioles were postponed by rain, with a makeup doubleheader scheduled for July 29. “I don't think it would have worked.”
Gausman was only half-kidding, although he and some other Blue Jays pitchers were on alert Monday with only nine position players healthy enough to play.
Before the game, “it was a legitimate conversation,” said Gausman, “and you give us a centimetre, we'll take a foot.” Chris Bassitt, on call to start in the event Jose Berrios —whose status was uncertain until his fever broke in the morning — couldn’t go, “was spiked up, full uni, so was (Alek) Manoah, he had wrist tape on, they jumped head-first into it,” said Gausman. “I didn’t have my spikes on, but I was uniformed up.”
It never came to that in the Blue Jays’ 3-2, 10-inning win and it wasn’t going to be necessary Tuesday, with Danny Jansen (back spasms) and Kevin Kiermaier (illness) both well enough to be in a lineup that rain shut down. George Springer and Justin Turner, also fighting the flu, both were also better but not yet ready to start, although they resumed baseball activity.
If push had come to shove Monday, though, would Schneider have really thrown a pitcher out on the field? How dire would the situation need to be for a pitcher to end up in, say, the batter’s box?
“Oh, man. Very,” he replied. “I think you'd have to run through everyone that wasn't really supposed to play and it would have to be extra innings and a lot of weird stuff happening there.”
The universal DH adopted as part of the most recent collective bargaining agreement in 2022 eliminated pitchers hitting, of course, and since then the prospect of using them anywhere else but the mound has become “scary,” said Schneider.
“When pitchers were hitting, they're running the bases, they're taking BP, it's a lot easier to do that,” he continued. “Right now it's a little bit scary to put guys in a spot where they haven't done anything for a couple of years. We're talking about guys haven't done anything in a couple days, so when you're looking at a couple of years, it's not ideal.”
Gausman very much recognizes that but he does miss pitchers hitting in the National League and the DH being American League only. He enjoyed hitting, especially in 2021 when he batted .185/.211/.185 with four RBIs in 62 plate appearances, after going 2-for-60 across parts of seven seasons prior.
That season the Giants placed an emphasis on finding ways for pitchers to contribute and he ended up taking daily batting practice.
“You do something every day by the end of the year you're going to be significantly better at it then when you first started,” he said. “That was true for me in ‘21.”
But he also found that working at his hitting helped keep him more athletic, which is why to this day he makes sure to shag flyballs every day he’s not pitching.
“It's not necessarily going to maybe translate to me being able to make a pitch,” he explained, “but it keeps me free and loose. If I'm not doing that, my body tightens up and I just feel like I'm not as limber, I don't move as well.”
Before the universal DH, being in “the National League made it easier for you to stay in shape. You're forced to hit. You're forced to run. You have to be in good shape,” he added.
“When you're just a starting pitcher, I can only speak for myself, but I've seen guys get in the mentality of just pitching, I just need to be a pitcher, and they lose a little bit of their athleticism. And I think being a complete baseball player and having to hit keeps that athleticism in check.”
His walk-off sac fly against Webb in 2021 came with the Giants out of position players and Camilo Doval’s spot coming up. Once it was a possibility, he went in the cage, turned the velo machine up to 95 and tried to get himself set.
In the batter’s box, Webb ran the count full, challenged him with a fastball and Gausman sold out for the heater, sending it to right just far enough to Brandon Crawford to scamper home with the winning run.
Similar heroics at the plate weren’t needed from him Monday, with Daulton Varsho’s run-scoring groundout bringing home the winning run off Keegan Akin in the 10th, so his hopes of getting back on the field somewhere other than the mound remain unfulfilled.
“In a perfect world, I play right field and throw somebody out,” Gausman said with a grin. “That would be sweet.”
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