Robert Gasser Has Come a Long Way for This Moment

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of Denis Poroy-Imagn Images

For many Brewers, trips to Los Angeles, Anaheim or San Diego count as visiting home. American baseball players disproportionately come from California—especially Southern California. Robert Gasser belongs to a different subtype of California ballplayer, though. He's from El Dorado Hills, a small community on the south side of Folsom Lake, just east of the infamous Folsom State Prison. That's the place where Johnny Cash became a legend, going before a crowd (the inmates of the prison) that would have intimidated most performers and laying down his sound as if they were old friends. Sharp like a razor, steady like a train, Cash's music has been called. It was the perfect sound for an audience like that. Gasser has been both things of late for the Brewers, too, and although his start Wednesday night will come before an even larger (and more hostile) crowd, he comes as well-armed for the performance as Cash was.

That's not because of his talent. Gasser does have good stuff, but it's never been elite. Even if it ever had been, it would have had to survive Tommy John surgery in 2024, so it might be diminished. Indeed, Gasser has had to prove his steadiness through a number of tough changes. He wasn't heavily recruited out of high school and started his collegiate career at the University of New Mexico, before transferring to the University of Houston. After the Padres drafted him in the second round in 2021, his stock rose quickly, but then he was part of the still-infamous (perhaps, with each passing day, less so) Josh Hader trade in July 2022.

Thrust into a new organization that has different predilections than the Padres, Gasser adjusted well, but he never got the call to help the 2023 Brewers. The 2024 team needed him relatively immediately, and he might have played a big role for them—but instead, after just five (very encouraging) starts, he tore his ulnar collateral ligament. His last appearance in 2024 was on June 1. He made it back to the mound last season only at the tail end, in late September. 

Proving his stuff was still big league-caliber was important, though, because it sent him into the offseason with positivity and purpose. Gasser had a runway and a path to a big job for the 2026 Brewers, but he was unable to claim it in spring training. In fact, he didn't reach the majors again until mid-May, when he made what was essentially a spot start against the Twins in Minnesota. He was viable but wobbly in that start, and in his next against the Dodgers (uh-oh), and he dropped back out of the rotation for a spell thereafter. He's had to make several adjustments, going back to the offseason and since the campaign began. Firstly, he changed the grip on his sinker, one of the primary weapons in his arsenal, to a one-seam variation that has more heavy sink. Speaking just after that first start in Minneapolis, he said the idea was to achieve more separation from his four-seam fastball, and that seems to have worked.

However, for a guy with a relatively heavy sinker, he gets very few ground balls. In fact, hitters lift the ball against him much more than against an average hurler. As the image above implies, they simply don't have to worry about anything that breaks downward. The sinker has more drop than one would expect, given its initial spin direction, but not so much (relative to his arm slot) that a hitter swings over the top of it or hits the top part of the ball very often. Nothing else in his arsenal even gives the appearance of downward movement, save his changeup—and that only does so when he plays it off his four-seamer, a pitch he's used less often as the year has progressed.

Swinging above the center of the ball nets grounders, but it's also the surest way to get whiffs against bif-league batters. Gasser gets his misses above hitters' bats, but that means he also allows a lot of contact in the air. He's not especially good at inducing hitters to swing early or late, either. He needs, then, to avoid the center of the barrel, to keep the ball in the park and have success. To do that, in turn, he's had to create tougher angles for opposing hitters.

Between the end of the 2025 season and the beginning of this one, Gasser slid from the third-base side of the rubber toward the center of it. Since the season began, he's slid more. Here are three snapshots of Gasser releasing sinkers, from (left to right) last September, this June, and this September.

He hasn't increased the crossfire stride pattern in his delivery; that would compromise his explosive move down the mound. Gasser gets great extension (6.9 feet toward the plate before he lets go of the ball) despite being just 6 feet tall, and it's the way he flies off his back leg that allows that to happen. To create tougher angles for batters, therefore, he's changed where he starts. Now, he's achieving that effect hitters often talk about so uneasily, where a same-handed batter feels like the ball is coming straight at them, at first. Righties, meanwhile, think the ball will never come back to the plate, so Gasser's cutter has been more effective against them, because it does.

After the All-Star break, Gasser made 12 starts. The Brewers won 10 of them. He maintained a 2.86 ERA and a 3.47 FIP over that span, and if you look at his last six starts (as he locked in what he's now doing so well), that ERA comes down to 1.67. He pitched 32 innings in those six appearances and gave up only two home runs. 

The Dodgers have seen the new-and-improved version of Gasser, too, although before he reached his final (for now) form. On August 14, they handed the Brewers one of those two losses in Gasser starts, thanks mostly to solo home runs by Andy Pages and Tommy Edman in the fifth and sixth innings. Those were the third at-bats for each player against Gasser, though—a privilege Pat Murphy could deny to each of them Wednesday night. Gasser still pitched well, overall, going 6 1/3 innings and allowing three runs, with one walk and seven strikeouts. If anything, that was a higher-function version of the Dodgers lineup than this one, and a less optimized version of Gasser than will step into the crucible of Dodger Stadium for Game 3.

Failure is still a real possibility. Being sharp and steady is important, but when Cash played Folsom Prison, he didn't have to beat another band. The Dodgers are fighting for their lives, and Gasser will have to bring his best. Already, though, he's shown that boisterous SoCal crowds can't spook him; he held firm in Game 4 of the NLDS against the Padres. He's made it through upheavals and injuries, and he's remade himself on the fly. He enters this matchup looking like the right person to strike the truly fatal blow on the defending champions. He just needs his newly sharpened arsenal and a steady heartbeat.

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[long ball]

Great writeup. I have a ton of faith in Gasser right now. Obviously you can slice up the endpoints however you want to paint a rosy picture but he's looked great from my sofa.

 

In a vacuum, 18 batters make sense. 3 games in 3 days may play a role, but if we have a narrow lead I'm pretty confident Murphy will go to the pen in an attempt to lock it down.