MIAMI, FL—On Thursday, Miami Marlins starter Cal Quantrill was claimed off waivers by the Atlanta Braves. With that rotation spot open for the first time all season, Ryan Gusto was recalled from Triple-A Jacksonville to start Friday’s game against the Toronto Blue Jays. Gusto was overshadowed and out-pitched by Shane Bieber as the Miami Marlins fell by a final score of 5-2.

Gusto struggled in the top of the first inning, allowing an RBI double to Daulton Varsho, driving in the game’s first run. Ty France, who followed Varsho, drove in two more runs on a single, but was thrown out trying to get to second base, ending what was a 29-pitch top of the first for the recent trade acquisition.

In his final inning of work, Gusto surrendered a 423-foot home run to Varsho, giving the Blue Jays a 5-1 lead. It marked Varsho’s 14th home run of the season. However, he found “a nice groove” in between, in the words of Marlins manager Clayton McCullough.

“Overall, his stuff was good and you saw a good fastball he used,” said McCullough. “It’s a deep mix with the cutter, sweeper, threw some changeups right-on-right, which is going to be a good pitch for him moving forward. Ryan came up, gave us six innings and unfortunately, in first and sixth, there was two-out base hits to cash in their runs. In totality, you look at it from a stuff perspective and and how well he got into a rhythm there in the middle part.”

Gusto posted a 70.8% first-pitch strike rate and a 54.5% ground ball rate. For the fourth time this season (including his time with the Houston Astros), the righty failed to record a single strikeout. He finished his outing going six innings, allowing five runs on seven hits and one walk.

“Definitely love some strikeouts to be on that line as well,” Gusto said. “I think that I was a little bit too uncompetitive with some of my two-strike offerings. I think that they’re a good bat-to-ball team. They were seeing the ball well, sticking to their plan that we talked about and I think that I had a lot of weak contact in two strike counts and to me, that’s still a win. It’s not the strikeout, it’s not the whiff that you want, but there’s a lot of really weak contact into the infield and pop-ups, so I take that as a win.”

Seems like Gusto has done a lot of experimenting throughout his time at the big league level, throwing six pitches on Friday: four-seam fastball (33% usage), cutter (19%), changeup (14%), sinker (12%), sweeper (11%) and curveball (10%).

“So far, I absolutely love it,” Gusto said about the Marlins organization. “I think these guys are really smart. They have a lot of really good insight and they’ve been very helpful with a lot of things. I’m already seeing the fruit of some of that with a few of my pitches that have seen good improvement. It’s just about working that into how I pitch and then getting the results. I’m looking forward to really seeing the the last month and a half go very well.”

The remainder of the season could be considered a trial period for Gusto, who will be competing for a rotation spot in 2026. Miami’s more experienced MLB starters include Sandy Alcantara, Edward Cabrera, Eury Pérez, Ryan Weathers, Braxton Garrett and Max Meyer. Even if one or more of them are involved in offseason trades, prospects Adam Mazur, Robby Snelling and Thomas White are all on the brink of being called up at some point next season. Gusto will really need to perform to make his case to stick with the big league team moving forward.

“They traded for me,” Gusto told the media postgame. “They had some plans for my arsenal and some adjustments that I could make. I think finishing the season out is going to be, in large part, making those adjustments that they wanted to see and really trying to see some success with that and put me in a really good situation for next year.”

For the Blue Jays, Shane Bieber was pitching in the big leagues for the first time since April 2024 coming off Tommy John surgery. He gave the Blue Jays six innings of one-run ball, allowing two hits, no walks and striking out nine. 

“He got ahead, really good fastball command and then the ability to spin the ball down below,” McCullough said. “Had his changeup going to some left-handed hitters. He can do enough work on the inside part of the plate to keep the outer lane open versus right. Going in, we needed to be aggressive against him because he’s going to come in and fill up the strike zone. He did that tonight and we just weren’t really ever able to string a whole lot. We did get in deep counts and he seemed to make some pitches when he needed to tonight.”

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In the bottom of the second inning, Javier Sanoja took Bieber deep on the tenth pitch of the at-bat. It was Sanoja’s fifth home run of the season. The Blue Jays still led, 3-1.

“It was a great at-bat,” McCullough said. “Bieber pitched a nice game. Had really been cruising at that point and Javi just kept spoiling pitches, kept fouling off and got something elevated and put a really good swing on it. We’ve seen that a lot from him this year—just the ability to stick his nose in there and spoil pitches battle.”

Maximo Acosta‘s first career hit was a home run on Wednesday night against the St. Louis Cardinals. His second hit? Also a home run. In the bottom of the eighth inning, Acosta took Blue Jays reliever Yariel Rodríguez deep.

With the loss, the Marlins fell to 60-68 on the season. Janson Junk will toe the rubber against José Berríos on Saturday with first pitch at 4:10 pm.