TORONTO — Trey Yesavage will climb a big league mound for just the sixth time when he starts Game 6 of the American League Championship Series on Oct. 18, the Toronto Blue Jays’ season riding on his 22-year-old arm. Yet even at such a tender time of his career, he needn’t be reminded how fleeting the moment can be.
Yesavage, the 2024 draftee who ascended four minor league levels to reach Toronto by September, has lived a career’s worth of emotions in just two weeks. No-hit the Yankees and strike out 11 over 5 ⅓ innings in his playoff debut?
Hey, this game is fun!
Cough up five runs to bury the Blue Jays in a 2-0 hole, forcing them to save their season in Seattle? Not so much.
Yet in this whirlwind major league apprenticeship, Yesavage is surrounded by sages, amazed to see Mad Max Scherzer’s shtick in person, wide-eyed at how loud Rogers Center roars its approval, and startled to discover that this career he’s only now launching can be so tenuous.
It took a conversation with Kevin Gausman, the Blue Jays’ 34-year-old ace, to gain that perspective.
‘This opportunity does not come up very often,’ Yesavage said a day before his Game 6 assignment against the Seattle Mariners, who hold a 3-2 ALCS lead and can advance to their first World Series with one win.
‘I was talking to Gausman the other day, and I said, ‘What’s the furthest you’ve made it in the playoffs? And he said, This is the furthest I’ve gone.’ And he’s been playing this game for a long time.
‘So I’m very blessed to be in this situation, and I only want to win and keep playing for myself, but for the guys that have not seen this part of baseball before.’
Gausman, who debuted as a 22-year-old in 2013, might not be thrilled by Yesavage painting him as Old Man Baseball, but the point remains: As quickly as the world is moving for Yesavage right now, there’s no guarantee that fortune will come back around.
Game 6 should be a fascinating peek into the young man’s skills, and psyche. His domination of the Yankees in Game 2 of the AL Division Series was so startling, so storybook. His parents were crying in the stands. He took a curtain call on a gorgeous, roof-open day at Rogers Centre.
And the Blue Jays moved on, with home field advantage and a shot at the World Series.
Both of those concepts faded quickly the next time Yesavage took the mound.
A walk, a hit batter, and a Julio Rodríguez rocket of a three-run home run buried the Blue Jays before they came to bat. Yesavage’s velocity dipped. He pieced together three scoreless innings but failed to get an out in the fifth. The 10-3 loss stunned Toronto, and only its thunderous bats awakening in Seattle made this a series.
What now?
‘He’s pitched in a lot of big games,’ says manager John Schneider. ‘He’s pitched in big regular season games, he’s pitched in big postseason games and he’s handled himself well. So again, I don’t want to put all of the pressure on Trey. He’s the starting pitcher. We’re going to have nine guys in the lineup that got to do their job and guys that got to do their job on defense too. So we got all the confidence in the world that he’ll have the right mindset.
‘He’s got to go out and do what he does.’
The Blue Jays and Mariners have the stage all to themselves, what with the Dodgers awaiting in the World Series. For Yesavage, it is a far cry not just from the fact he was an East Carolina junior just 16 months ago, but also that he started the season at low Class A Dunedin.
But he climbed every run on the ladder to get here. By now, most of his peers have wrapped up instructional league, or are getting a last gasp of summer in the Arizona Fall League.
Yesavage will pitch in front of 45,000 fans and a massive North American viewing audience. Rare, and hopefully for him, not ephemeral.
‘Obviously this has been the longest I’ve thrown,’ he says of a neverending 2025. ‘But the organization throughout the entire minor league system monitored my pitch count, my innings, so I’m not as fatigued as I would be if that wasn’t the case.
‘So I’m in a very good spot where I’m at.’
With a chance to take himself and his teammates closer to the next plateau.