TORONTO — On Saturday afternoon, manager Casey Candaele called Trey Yesavage into his office and offered the 22-year-old pitching prospect, slated to start the next day for triple-A Buffalo a choice: shut it down for the season, or head up to join the Toronto Blue Jays.
“I thought it’d be a better decision to come up here and pitch for the Blue Jays,” Yesavage, seated in the home dugout at Rogers Centre, recalled with a grin. “I was very emotional at first and then after that I was almost like, numb. I didn’t know how to feel. It was just a whirlwind of emotions.”
Whirlwind also applies to the 2024 first-rounder’s maiden pro season, which started at low-A Dunedin and hits a fifth level Monday, when he’ll make his big-league debut at the Tampa Bay Rays.
Almost exactly a year earlier, Yesavage was seated in nearly the very same spot in the home dugout during a visit to Toronto, discussing the draft and his future. The Blue Jays had essentially shut down the 20th overall pick following a dominant season at East Carolina that included 93.1 innings and a start shortly after a partially punctured lung.
This season, he bullied low-A hitters at Dunedin for seven outings, went to high-A Vancouver to overmatch hitters for four starts before hitting double-A New Hampshire, where it was eight outings (seven starts) before the promotion to Buffalo, where he pitched six times, including twice out of the bullpen.
In 98 innings — a personal workload high — he’s struck out a staggering 160 batters, a degree of dominance that’s driven his upward trajectory.
“Being able to adapt to different situations and different hitters, being able to read swings,” are the areas in which Yesavage believes he’s made the most growth since that initial visit to Toronto.
“In college, I was having my pitching coach call most of my pitches for me, and now it’s me and the catcher working together. So being able to read swings and knowing what I want to throw in different situations and being able to make adjustments as the game goes on,” he said.
All of that is about to face its stiffest test yet, as Yesavage takes on big-league hitters with his fastball/splitter/slider repertoire, a combination the Blue Jays feel is more than sufficient to handle MLB hitters.
“There’s swing-and-miss with the slider. Swing-and-miss with the split. Swing-and-miss with the fastball,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said. “It’s a very unique delivery. It’s a very unique angle at which the ball is being delivered and you don’t see that very often with pitchers. Going back to when we drafted him, not only the stuff and the person, that was the attractive thing for us and how hitters would adjust to that. We’ll see. Looking at his outings in the minors and again, minors (are) way different than the big leagues, when he’s in the zone he’s pretty good. I’m sure there are going to be some nerves involved at first. But the combination of his pitches and the way his delivery works was really enticing for us.”
Promoting Yesavage to the majors to join a club on track to become the first American League team to clinch a post-season berth in the coming days is a somewhat aggressive move by the Blue Jays, who are generally deliberate with their pitching prospects.
The Detroit Tigers did something similar with Jackson Jobe, their 2021 first-rounder, a year ago, bringing him up in late September and using him twice out of the bullpen during the regular season and then twice more during the post-season. In 2008, the Tampa Bay Rays got a boost from David Price, the first overall pick in 2007, and used him five times in September and five times during a run to the World Series.
This year, under more trying team circumstances, the New York Mets recently promoted Canadian Jonah Tong, their 2022 seventh-rounder, and Brandon Sproat, their 2023 second-rounder, and inserted them into the rotation.
Already rolling five starters, the Blue Jays will simply be looking for Yesavage to help keep them rolling after a 5-1 homestand against Houston and Baltimore.
“It’s special, it just shows the trust they have in me and being able to help them accelerate into the playoffs is huge,” Yesavage said. “It’s a great honour to be a part of. I’m glad I could do it.”
Another potential lift for the Blue Jays could come later this week or early next, as Anthony Santander is now through four games of DH work at Buffalo and expected to play the outfield Tuesday with the Bisons. He’s 3-for-13 with a double, a homer, four walks and four strikeouts, with at-bat quality, rather than numbers, determining his readiness.
If Santander can regain his form, he can help make up for some of the offence lost when Bo Bichette sprained his left knee. A better sense of Bichette’s timeline could emerge in the next couple of days.
But having claimed Isiah Kiner-Falefa on waivers just ahead of the Sept. 1 deadline for post-season eligibility, Yesavage’s promotion is another example of how the Blue Jays are doing all they can to find ways to reinforce the roster.
So, here comes a big-league debut like few others the Blue Jays have had.
“I thought it was pretty cool,” Yesavage said of learning he’d start Monday. “I mean, I’ve been training for this. I’m ready for it and it’s just exciting.”
