Blue Jays reporter inspires new analytic... make way for Stubble Score

The long-time Toronto writer recently had some fun regarding Kevin Gausman, jokingly noting that the ace pitcher's improved performance is directly related to when he started growing a beard.

Matheson has some well-manicured facial hair of his own.

Now, picking up where Matheson left off, the team over at FanGraphs has created a new analytic in his honour. Say hello to Stubble Score.

Like many things on FanGraphs, it's overly technical and numbers and charts-heavy. But it is all laid out here

After Matheson seemingly calling out all the nerds, FanGraphs accepted the challenge. Creating a beard scale of 1-5 for Gausman, they plotted out his starts and correlated it with his amount of facial hair. (Also, on the 1-5 scale, Matheson's beard is a 14).

Keegan may be onto something though. According to FanGraphs, Gausman has pitched better, when he's had more stubble to show.

The correlation coefficient between his Stubble Score and game score is .38. The correlation with ERA is even higher.

In another method of looking at it, eleven times this season Gausman has had a game score of 60. In ten of those starts, his stubble score has been 38 or higher.

Now correlation is not causation and vice versa. And the sample sizes are small. But baseball and its players are rife with superstition.

With everything seemingly going Toronto's way at this juncture, perhaps Gausman would be wise on sticking with a hairy chin. While it may never reach Matheson-level growth, it just might throw another complete game.