Yesavage battles in 9-K start as Wild Card gap widens ahead of Deadline

BOSTON -- Even when the Blue Jays find a way to make a game of it, the American League Wild Card race just keeps drifting away from them.

Friday night’s 6-4 loss to the Red Sox at Fenway Park dropped the Blue Jays (47-57) to 6 1/2 games back of the final Wild Card spot with the Aug. 3 Trade Deadline looming.

This is what mattered most:

1. Okamoto can’t do it all himself

Kazuma Okamoto breathed some life back into this game with a three-run shot in the seventh, which broke Shohei Ohtani’s 2018 record for home runs by a Japanese-born rookie with 23. Without any help, though, that lives on as a footnote in another loss.

This could have been the go-ahead blast, but the Blue Jays let Patrick Sandoval off the hook in the first inning and handed the Red Sox a zero on the scoreboard. Toronto loaded the bases, even watching Sandoval throw 10 straight balls at one point, but Davis Schneider looked at strike three to end the threat.

“The first inning, this team’s about as hot as you can get, right?” manager John Schneider said. “And they’re coming off an off-day, so you want to take advantage of anything you can early. We had traffic, but we left a lot of guys on and had some pitches to hit that we didn’t capitalize on. I love the way they battled back, a big at-bat from Okamoto and then getting one in the eighth, but early on, we probably could have done a bit more.”

The Blue Jays’ numbers with the bases loaded this season aren’t pretty. They’ve actually run into the odd burst of power with three grand slams over their 57 at-bats, but oddly enough, their contact ability hasn’t shown up. The Blue Jays rank second-last in baseball with a .193 average in these situations, better than only the Marlins (.173).

Let’s not pretend that 57 at-bats are enough of a sample size to draw major conclusions from, but this is yet another layer to why the offense has struggled. Big hits in big moments have been lacking, and were again on Friday.

2. We saw every version of Yesavage

At some points, Trey Yesavage looked like the rookie who lit MLB on fire last season. Even after the long, shaky first frame, he came right back and struck out the side in the second.

Yesavage’s pitch count ran up quickly, though, a product of a whopping nine strikeouts over just four innings -- which the Blue Jays will happily take -- but also the long at-bats that got him there. Even in that second inning with three strikeouts, Yesavage had a couple of eight-pitch battles. Turning some of those into a four-pitch strikeout, or even a weak ground ball on the second pitch he throws, is the key to unlocking the rest of his potential.

“I was getting ahead early. I think every batter I faced, I got to a two-strike count,” Yesavage said. “It’s just a matter of putting them away, which really drove up the pitch count.”

If everything already points to 2027 and beyond at this point, which it very well might, Yesavage’s growth is one of the most important factors in this organization. He owns a 3.92 ERA over 85 innings, on pace to land somewhere in the range of 150 this season. That would be a great baseline heading into ‘27, but the efficiency from start to start remains crucial.

“We just need to come together, win ballgames and play for each other,” Yesavage said.

3. Could the Red Sox be a trade partner?

For now, the Blue Jays are chasing the Red Sox and Guardians, who are in a tight race holding the second and third Wild Card spots. Between the Blue Jays and those teams are the Mariners, Twins, Astros, Orioles and Tigers, so there’s nothing simple about this. Toronto’s postseason odds are shrinking by the day.

These two teams could soon line up as trade partners, which has happened before. When the Blue Jays were out of the race in 2024, they traded Danny Jansen to Boston for prospects Cutter Coffey (Toronto’s No. 22 prospect per MLB Pipeline), Eddinson Paulino and Gilberto Bautista. In 2018, the Blue Jays traded Steve Pearce to the Red Sox, who went on to be the World Series MVP.

If George Springer is dealt -- which looks likely at this point -- it’s easy to see a potential fit with the Red Sox as a veteran DH type and part-time outfielder.