- Trey Yesavage got the win in ALCS Game 6, his sixth career MLB start.
- The 22-year-old right-hander was a first-round pick in 2024.
- Yesavage draws rave reviews from veteran teammates Max Scherzer and Kevin Gausman.
TORONTO — Julio Rodriguez took ball four, tossed his bat away, clapped twice and exhorted his teammates in the Seattle Mariners dugout. Sure, they were in a two-run hole in the third inning of Game 6 in this American League Championship Series, but Cal Raleigh, the likely AL MVP, was coming to the plate and the bases were loaded.
The score was fixing to be flipped with one swing from a man who’s hit 64 home runs through the playoffs. Just one hanging splitter or mislocated fastball or cement-mixer slider from a 22-year-old rookie who was in Class AAA ball a month ago, and the Mariners would be on track for their first trip to the World Series.
Yet the Toronto Blue Jays were thinking something entirely different: Trey Yesavage, with all of six major league starts behind him, is no ordinary newcomer.
“When he has the ball,” Max Scherzer, the 41-year-old future Hall of Fame right-hander tells USA TODAY Sports, “we all believe in him.”
And so Yesavage threw just one split-finger fastball to the MVP, and Raleigh scorched a 100-mph worm burner right to Vladimir Guerrero Jr., beginning a fundamentally gorgeous 3-6-1 double play that finished with Yesavage blindly finding the bag with his right foot.
It ended the threat and began an almost absurd sequence of three double-play grounders in three innings, guiding the Blue Jays toward a 6-2 victory that squared this series 3-3 and set the stage for the most pulsating delight in the sport.
Game 7, winner to the World Series, loser left with a winter of regrets.
For now, that loser won’t be the Blue Jays, who overcame a desultory Game 5 defeat to keep their season alive.
Give some flowers to Guerrero and Addison Barger for their home runs and Barger’s three RBIs, and closer Jeff Hoffman for his two near-perfect innings of relief.
But know this: The Blue Jays are a win away from their first World Series since 1993 because of a kid drafted 20th overall barely more than a year ago, who started the year in lowest Class A, climbed the ladder all the way to Toronto in September and has faced down October’s biggest demons to gain the trust of a veteran clubhouse and, in Game 6, the entirety of Canada’s baseball-watching population.
But how?
“He has this silent confidence,” says Blue Jays ace Kevin Gausman. “He’s kind of jokingly said he’s pitched in a lot of big games before (turning pro), and it’s funny that he thinks those were super-big games. But he really looked back on those and how he went about these, just with a bigger crowd.
“He’s not scared of anybody. Maybe he’s a little young and maybe naïve, but he’s just going to go after guys.”
That was the only way to escape the trouble that found him in Game 6.
An inning after Raleigh’s double play, the one-out drama returned, Seattle going single-single-walk to again load the bases. Now talk about going right at ‘em: Yesavage jumped ahead of J.P. Crawford with two quick strikes, and the splitter was back, Crawford grounding a one-hopper to Isiah Kiner-Falefa, who snagged it, threw to second and was already pointing to the sky before shortstop Andrés Giménez made the turn.
“His splitter is next level,” says Scherzer. “He’s making the best hitters in the game look foolish on it. It’s such a big pitch, it gets him out of so many dangerous situations.”
Want one more? Fifth inning, a Dominic Canzone single, a Leo Rivas strikeout on a split, but now the lineup turned over. Yesavage’s pitch count had hit the 70s, and he’d suffered diminished velocity from his first playoff start against the Yankees (historic) and his second one in Game 2 against the Mariners (terrible).
What’s more, Rodriguez had scored a three-run homer off Yesavage in Game 2
So, how was your mental state at that time, John Schneider?
“Not great,” says the Blue Jays manager.
Not to worry. Rodriguez swung at a first-pitch fastball and this time it was Giménez’s turn to initiate, the 6-4-3 DP keeping the emotional edge – and the momentum – in the third base dugout.
That’s no small thing in an ALCS that, from the Blue Jays’ perspective, has gone loss-loss-win-win-loss-win. Lesser players might be dizzy from such a whirlwind.
After the gorgeous third-inning double play, the Blue Jays dugout erupted and a 2-0 lead quickly became a 4-0 advantage, when Ernie Clement’s two-out triple preceded Barger’s two-run laser into the right field seats.
“It’s everything. It’s such a momentum game,” says Clement, who had two more hits, giving him eight in the series. “You can see it the last couple games: Whoever has the momentum kind of rises and gets it done.
“For (Yesavage) to make those pitches in those situations shows a lot of poise and maturity.”
He gave them 5 ⅔ innings, gave up two runs, struck out seven, setting down six in a row to set the tone before dodging trouble in epic fashion come the middle innings.
And with each escape, the 44,764 fans who stuffed Rogers Centre roared, the tension of the night releasing with each inning.
Not exactly East Carolina, where Yesavage was pitching a year ago. Not that he tried to block out the noise.
“It wasn’t really how I had to deal with it,” he says. “It was how I could use it to my advantage.”
That’s one way to handle the stress, an ability that’s jumped out to his far more veteran teammates since the Blue Jays recalled him in September, hoping to workshop an October weapon out of a guy who ascended A, AA and AAA ball in just a few months.
“That’s what strikes you right away when you meet him: He’s very levelheaded, very calm,” says Hoffman. “He’s got a great presence about him and the fact he holds it in big games like this is a really good sign, a really cool thing for the Blue Jays for the future.
“You can see the makeup. And he’s got what it takes, and he’s got a great group of guys around him to help him any way we can moving forward.”
Yesavage’s work, finally, is done for the year. Every member of the Blue Jays pitching staff expects to be available for Game 7 except Yesavage, who can simply watch and learn, and marvel at this amazing opportunity to win a championship ring before he’s even spent a month in the big leagues.
At the same time: He’s the reason they’re still alive.
Says Guerrero: “I’m very proud of him: 22 years old, young, hungry and you can tell he goes out and does everything he can to win the game.”