LOS ANGELES — Picture Trey Yesavage wearing a blue ballcap with a Buffalo Bison on it. It was mid-August, a couple hours after his triple-A debut, which lasted just five outs and saw Yesavage give up a walk, a single and two more walks to the first four batters he faced.
The right-hander with the over-the-top delivery stood in front of a small group of reporters post-game in Buffalo after giving up two earned runs and walking four batters in the first inning, and he explained he always fought nerves while debuting with a new team, and he was happy to now have them out of the way.
“I know I’m the same guy, and I’ll be better for it next week,” Yesavage said, then at his fourth stop in pro ball within the Toronto Blue Jays’ organization.
The 22-year-old rookie sure wasn’t wrong there, and he’s certainly proven his value in short time. Fast forward two-and-change months after that triple-A debut to a late October Tuesday, and Yesavage was sitting behind a table at Dodger Stadium addressing a much bigger group of media, one day before his Game 5 start in the World Series.
The youngest player competing in the Fall Classic is now on the cusp of his second World Series start, which is just one more start than Yesavage made in the regular season before he became a massive part of Toronto’s playoff picture.
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Asked what he was like at the age of 22 and Blue Jays closer Jeff Hoffman laughs at the notion that he might’ve shown even a little bit of the poise that Yesavage has displayed in his short time with the team.
“I had no chance,” Hoffman said, grinning and shaking his head. “I can’t imagine myself, my rookie year pitching the World Series — and we’ve got three guys doing it.”
Yesavage has company with relievers Mason Fluharty, 24, and Braydon Fisher, 25, who’ve been key out of the bullpen down the stretch. “It’s been amazing to watch and really cool,” Hoffman said.
As Yesavage goes head-to-head against two-time Cy Young winner Blake Snell to decide which team will lead this series before it shifts to Toronto for a game or two, the Blue Jays starter says he’s confident that his rocket-fuelled journey to this stage has helped prepare him for what is just his eighth MLB start, and his biggest yet.
“Each day I learn something new. I take something away from my game or someone else’s game,” Yesavage said of the season that saw him start in low-A. “So just stacking all those up this entire season has led me to this point.”
This point exactly is two wins away from a World Series championship, 32 years after Toronto won its second of back-to-back titles, the lone championships in franchise history.
That Yesavage earned this team’s trust to start Game 1 of the World Series and be the first starter to earn a repeat performance for all the marbles means this team was even quicker to trust him than Yesavage was to climb up the organization’s ranks.
“It’s massive,” he said. “Being a rookie that’s 22 years old and having that weight put on your shoulders, it’s a big deal. But everyone in this clubhouse has my back.”
“It’s hard not to trust him,” said infielder Ernie Clement, not long after Toronto evened the World Series with a big bounce-back win, taking Tuesday’s Game 4 by a score of 6-2 after dropping a marathon 18-inning contest a night earlier.
“He has so much poise and he makes big pitches in big spots,” Clement added. “So right now, there’s not a whole lot of guys you’d rather have going.”
“Even though he’s 23 years old,” said Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who accidentally aged his teammate by a year, “Trey is one of those guys that goes up there and he gives you all he has, and that’s what I expect from him [Wednesday].
“Not just me, but my teammates. I think he’s going to have a great game,” added Guerrero Jr., who set the franchise’s all-time post-season record with his seventh home run of the playoffs in Game 4.
Yesavage hasn’t had a lot of time to prove himself, yet he’s done so on stages that many pitchers only dream of reaching. His final regular season start, the third MLB appearance of his career, Yesavage was tasked with keeping Toronto’s chances of clinching the American League alive. He answered that bell. His sixth MLB start, Game 6 of the ALCS, was a do-or-die tilt against Seattle and Yesavage struck out seven over 5.2 innings, gave up two earned runs and was the winning pitcher in a 6-2 victory.
His last appearance was five days ago to open the Fall Classic, a resounding 11-4 win at home.
Have there been nerves ahead of any of those playoff starts? Not if you ask the elder statesman and future Hall of Fame starter in Toronto’s clubhouse, Max Scherzer. “No,” the right-hander said. “He’s just part of us in here.”
“To be this young, he’s getting a crash course into what it is to be a Major League starter,” Scherzer added. “And here he is in the post-season, in the ALCS, now the World Series, and it’s just go out there and do your thing.
“He has a good understanding of how to pitch, he knows what his strikeout pitches are and how to work around that. And he shows tremendous poise for somebody so young.”
All of Yesavage’s previous post-season appearances have come at home, and Game 5 will mark his first on the road. He’ll have his parents and his brother Cole in the crowd, along with 50,000 or so amped Dodgers fans, but that’s a new experience for Yesavage is of little concern to the Blue Jays.
“I think with each passing day he’s here he gets more comfortable,” said manager John Schneider. “I think kind of having his feet on the ground here for a couple days was important, and kind of seeing the environment and feeling it a little bit. But [I] have no reservations about him pitching on the road.”
Yesavage seems to have no reservations himself. Asked if he’d quizzed any teammates about the challenges of pitching at Dodger Stadium, the starter said he hadn’t asked or talked to anyone much about it, but he wasn’t too concerned.
“We play in front of big crowds too,” Yesavage said, simply. “So we’re ready.”
Yesavage has been ready to prove himself since he began his meteoric rise within this organization, because he’s known he could be the “same guy” who’d prove he belonged on the biggest stages. He did that in a hurry, and now he has a chance to help his Blue Jays earn a win and head home one victory away from a long-awaited World Series title.
