A Giant emerges: How Kevin Gausman evolved into the NL’s surprise success story

It would be too easy to declare that baseball’s endearing unpredictability is nicely epitomized in the parallel sagas of Kevin Gausman and the San Francisco Giants.

After all, Gausman, to the surprise of all, is the best pitcher in the National League not named Jacob deGrom, the nascent ace of a team with its league’s best record, a collection of cast-offs and try-agains outshining the many MVPs and faces of baseball to the south in Los Angeles and San Diego.

Gausman has a 1.43 ERA and the Giants a 40-25 record and .615 winning percentage, benchmarks that, after one-third of the season, have earned the seal of legitimacy but are about to endure the stress test of sustainability. If it’s kismet, we’ll know soon enough.

But that would betray the highly deliberate course corrections both pitcher and franchise took on nearly three years ago, when they dared challenge their conventional wisdoms and pull out of a pattern of mediocrity.

“That’s the biggest thing – finally learning, why have a cookie-cutter mentality? Why try to be something I’m not?” Gausman, 30, told USA TODAY Sports a day before a recent start. “It took me this long to figure that out.

“But I’m glad that I finally did."

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For Gausman, that moment came in August 2018, not during a bullpen session or in a manager’s office but rather a nearly vacant ballroom of a Manhattan hotel. He’d just been traded from the Baltimore Orioles – the team that drafted him fourth overall out of LSU in 2012 – to the Atlanta Braves, who didn’t just hope they might turn a high-end talent into a dominant asset during a run to the division title.

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