John E. Sokolowski-Imagn Photographs
Keegan Matheson has a beard. Let’s begin there. Matheson is MLB.com’s Blue Jays beat author and he has a beard. It’s a giant, wonderful, pointy beard, and it’s connected to his face and every part.
Blue Jays starter Kevin Gamman has a beard too. It’s not wonderful like Matheson’s. The appropriate-hander often opts for just a few days’ development, however in current weeks, he’s been going a step additional. It’s nonetheless patchy within the cheeks. Closeups present you particular person hairs splayed in whichever course their whimsy takes them. All the identical, most of the time, Gausman has been shifting past stubble standing and into the beginnings of beard territory. Gausman has additionally been pitching fairly effectively currently, working a 2.25 ERA and three.00 FIP over his previous 10 begins.
Final Thursday, Matheson watched Gausman mow down the Astros, pitching a shutout with 9 strikeouts, two walks, and one hit, and made the connection. “The nerds gained’t inform you this as a result of their charts gained’t present it,” he posted on Bluesky“however Kevin Gausman’s current scorching streak has a direct correlation to him embracing a beard. One thing to observe.”
In case you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m a nerd. And I take offense. Within the pantheon of recommendation, “Don’t problem the nerds to do one thing nerdy” is true up there with “Correlation doesn’t indicate causation” and “By no means go in towards a Sicilian when demise is on the road.” Problem accepted.
Gausman has made 29 begins this season. For every a kind of begins, I downloaded high-resolution photographs from our picture service, zoomed manner in on his face, and graded the quantity of facial hair utilizing our newest sabermetric innovation: the Stubble Rating (trademark pending). Then I took these grades and checked for a correlation with Gausman’s efficiency:
Let’s begin by breaking down the size right here. It goes from one to 5. A one is totally clear shaven; a 5 is the beard Gausman sported final week. (Matheson’s beard can be a 14.) Right here’s an instance of every integer on the size so you recognize what we’re speaking about:
Photograph credit left to proper: Vincent Carchietta, John E. Sokolowski, Kevin Sousa, Nick Turchiaro, John E. Sokolowski. Imagn Photographs.
As you’ll be able to see from the distribution under, Gausman spends most of his time proper within the center, within the vary that I’d classify as critical stubble. It’s not fairly a beard, nevertheless it’s greater than a day or two of development. He’s solely gone totally clear shaven one time all season:
I point out that one clean-shaven recreation particularly as a result of, uh, it didn’t go effectively. It was on April 27 and Gausman acquired completely lit up, permitting six earned runs to the Yankees and lasting simply 2 2/3 innings. His recreation rating of 23 was his second lowest of your entire season. Oh, I must also point out that one time he sported a glove beard. It was a surprisingly nice look:
John Froschauer-Mimagn Photographs
Anyhow, even in the event you toss out that one clean-shaven recreation as an outlier, Gausman has pitched higher when he’s been extra closely bearded. The correlation coefficient between his Stubble Rating and recreation rating is .38. The correlation with ERA is even greater. Right here’s a scatterplot with a trendline. What might be extra scientific-seeming than that little diagonal dotted line?
Eleven instances this season, Gausman has put up a recreation rating of 60 or higher. He had a Stubble Rating of three.0 or greater in 10 of these 11 begins. When Gausman has been at his greatest, his beard has been at its bushiest. As soon as once more, even once we throw out that clean-shaven abomination, the ERA tells a reasonably convincing story:
Usually, that is the a part of the article the place I’d throw in a bunch of caveats. Let’s be careful for small pattern sizes and conflating variables and batted ball luck and so forth. However we’re writing about one thing necessary right this moment, so I don’t need to get slowed down in minor particulars like logic and analytical rigor. Everyone is aware of that each time a participant performs higher within the second half, there’s one easy narrative that may clarify it completely. That’s simply science.
Certain, the correlation between Gausman’s Stubble Rating and his recreation rating is nearly precisely the identical because the correlations between his Stubble Rating and his strand fee and BABIP, two traditional indicators of luck. And positive, the strongest correlation I discovered was actually simply to the date, indicating that this current scorching stretch has merely occurred to coincide with some much less fastidious grooming, slightly than being attributable to it. And so long as we’re piling on the sures, 9 of Gausman’s 11 worst begins this season got here when he had a facial hair ranking of three.0 or greater. However let’s ignore all that and keep in mind that very official trying dotted trendline. There’s no have to get so nerdy that we let our completely tidy narrative get all tough and rugged, like an unshaved Kevin Gausman mowing down opposing batters. Let’s declare victory. Concern the beard. Cheer the beard. Correlation is causation. I’m fairly positive I heard that someplace.
Now that the charts have conclusively demonstrated the facility of Gausman’s beard, we will flip our consideration to various different questions that want answering. As an example, does this imply that Keegan Matheson and his immaculate beard may win a Cy Younger in the event that they felt so inclined? Ought to Gausman head right down to Spirit Halloween and purchase a Gandalf costume, simply on the off likelihood {that a} pretend beard works in addition to an actual one and he turns into the second coming of Pedro Martinez? What number of months would it not take for him to develop a beard full sufficient that that little hairless patch on his proper cheek would lastly fill in? If that is actually a Samson scenario (and right here let’s observe that Samson was the son of Manoah), ought to we shove Gausman into the batter’s field and see what occurs when he takes some cuts with the jawbone of an ass?
I’m positive we’ll reply all of those questions ultimately, particularly the jawbone one. Within the meantime, I’d encourage the Blue Jays clubbies to dig via Gausman’s locker and confiscate his trimmer.
