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 Gausman has a beard too. It’s not wonderful like Matheson’s. The precise-hander normally opts for a couple of days’ development, however in latest 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 transferring past stubble standing and into the beginnings of beard territory. Gausman has additionally been pitching fairly properly recently, operating 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 received’t let you know this as a result of their charts received’t present it,” he posted on Bluesky, “however Kevin Gausman’s latest sizzling streak has a direct correlation to him embracing a beard. One thing to watch.”
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 correct up there with “Correlation doesn’t suggest causation” and “By no means go in in opposition to 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 photos from our photograph 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 understand what we’re speaking about:
Picture credit left to proper: Vincent Carchietta, John E. Sokolowski, Kevin Sousa, Nick Turchiaro, John E. Sokolowski. Imagn Photographs.
As you possibly can see from the distribution under, Gausman spends most of his time proper within the center, within the vary that I might classify as critical stubble. It’s not fairly a beard, but it surely’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 sport specifically as a result of, uh, it didn’t go properly. 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 sport rating of 23 was his second lowest of the complete season. Oh, I must also point out that one time he sported a glove beard. It was a surprisingly nice look:
Anyhow, even when you toss out that one clean-shaven sport as an outlier, Gausman has pitched higher when he’s been extra closely bearded. The correlation coefficient between his Stubble Rating and sport rating is .38. The correlation with ERA is even greater. Right here’s a scatterplot with a trendline. What could possibly be extra scientific-seeming than that little diagonal dotted line?
Eleven instances this season, Gausman has put up a sport 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 after 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 essential at this time, so I don’t wish to get slowed down in minor particulars like logic and analytical rigor. Everyone is aware of that at any time when 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 sport rating is nearly precisely the identical because the correlations between his Stubble Rating and his strand charge and BABIP, two traditional indicators of luck. And positive, the strongest correlation I discovered was actually simply to the date, indicating that this latest sizzling stretch has merely occurred to coincide with some much less fastidious grooming, relatively than being brought on by 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 do not forget that very official wanting dotted trendline. There’s no must 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. For 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 wouldn’t it 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 state of affairs (and right here let’s be aware 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 eventually, particularly the jawbone one. Within the meantime, I’d encourage the Blue Jays clubbies to dig via Gausman’s locker and confiscate his trimmer.