It’s hard to recognize greatness when it’s right under your nose. Many would admit they took the Roy Halladay era of Blue Jays baseball for granted, as Doc’s games were appointment viewing for his dozen years in Toronto.

Much like the Dave Stieb era before him, Halladay’s and Stieb’s bodies of work have aged like fine wine and only get better the further they recede into the rearview mirror. But history is being made before our very eyes with a Blue Jays starting pitcher in the final year of his contract.

In his fifth year with the Blue Jays, and at 35 years old, Gausman is still somehow underrated. He’s been one of the most reliable, durable starting pitchers in baseball since taking off during his All-Star campaign with the San Francisco Giants. But Gausman has delivered some of his best work in a Blue Jays uniform.

After his last start on the road against the Tigers this past Monday, Gausman posted yet another quality start, his sixth on the season in 10 games. And since 2022, it’s been nothing but a steady stream of quality starts from Gausman. But he’s now been doing it for so long that he’s entered the conversation of the best Blue Jays starting pitchers of all time.

With now 75 quality starts to his name and a quality start percentage of 56% as a Blue Jay, Gausman has become one of the top five most consistent and impressive starting pitchers in franchise history.

No one will ever touch Stieb’s 244 career quality starts as a Blue Jay, being a pitcher from a different era when it was normal to post 10-plus complete games in a season. At his peak, Stieb had 19 complete games in 38 starts during his 1982 season.

Halladay worked with surgical-like precision, and it’s also difficult to envision any Blue Jays starting pitcher ever surpassing 65% career quality starts. Two-thirds of the time, Halladay was going at least six innings and giving up three or fewer earned runs. He was as close to automatic as you could find.

Former Blue Jays reliever Jason Frasor once told me that the bullpen guys loved Halladay start days because they were almost assured they’d get the day off, which meant they didn’t have to feel bad about tying one on the night before. It was typically a quiet day in the bullpen when Doc was on the mound.

If we’re looking at overall quality starts, there’s a logjam of pitchers who are hovering around the 75 quality start mark, with R.A. Dickey, Marcus Stroman, Ricky Romero and Gausman all tied at 10th overall. Jose Berrios is one better at 76 quality starts, and due to his Tommy John surgery, it’s unclear whether he’ll pitch for the Blue Jays again, let alone record a quality start.

Given his lukewarm reception by part of the fanbase, most would be surprised to see Dickey’s name on that above list, but his short-lived four-year tenure in Toronto was remarkably consistent overall, with a 58% quality start rate. The issue was that Dickey’s non-quality starts were often unmitigated disasters, as that knuckleball was often a fickle mistress.

With a handful more quality starts this year, Gausman should easily slingshot past Luis Leal with 78 quality starts, and Gausman might even sneak past Todd Stottlemyre by year’s end, who has 82 quality starts with the Blue Jays.

What makes Gausman’s case even more impressive is that he’s done it in a shorter span. He has one of the fewest games started among that group listed above, yet he’s rocking a career 56% quality start rate.

His overall counting stats, as games started, innings pitched, and strikeouts, won’t outpace Stieb or Halladay (Stieb was a Blue Jay for 16 seasons, Halladay for 12), but there are a few metrics where Gausman is atop the Blue Jays franchise leaderboard.

Gausman’s 3.14 FIP is tops among all Blue Jays starters with 130 or more career starts; his 9.6 K/9 is number one, he has the best WHIP at 1.163, and his 55.8 average Game Score is narrowly better than Halladay’s 55.7 average Game Score.

It’s difficult to compare starting pitchers of different eras, as strikeouts totals increase decade after decade, but that average Game Score number by Gausman should be a real indicator he’s been a dependable asset, and worth every penny of his $125 million contract.

Recency bias may be in play here, but Gausman also had a highly underrated postseason run last year, his final two starts in the World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers being quality starts. Those were both in losing efforts for the Blue Jays in Games 2 and 6, as Gausman opposed World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

Considering how well he’s pitching at age 35, it’s wild that retirement is even a consideration for the Blue Jays veteran, but as he told Mitch Bannon of The Athletic earlier this year, it sounds like there’s a faint possibility Gausman hangs up his spikes at the end of this season.

At this point in his career, Gausman has earned the right to exit on his own terms, but it feels like retirement talk is still years away. There’s also a chance he re-signs with the Blue Jays, which would give him even more runway to build upon his resume as one of the most important starting pitchers to call Toronto home.

When people talk about the greatest arms in Blue Jays history, Stieb and Halladay are 1A or 1B, in an echelon of ace tier by themselves. Then it’s a smattering of Jimmy Key, Jim Clancy, Pat Hentgen, and Juan Guzman as the next level down of dominant Blue Jays starters.

By the end of this year, whether he suits up in Blue Jays blue for another tier or not, Gausman will have carved his spot into the pantheon of the greatest Blue Jays starting pitchers.

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