Yesavage gets over the finish line with brief cameo to end '26

TORONTO -- Soon enough, we’ll be longing for an afternoon baseball game, but Saturday afternoon’s won’t be the one we romanticize.

The Blue Jays lost to the Reds, 5-1, on a quiet afternoon at Rogers Centre, teeing up the season finale on Sunday with Max Scherzer taking the mound in what could be his final MLB appearance, but the future Hall of Famer hasn’t decided just yet.

This is what mattered most:

1. Trey Yesavage says goodbye to 2026

The Blue Jays only asked Yesavage for two innings on 30 pitches Saturday, not wanting to push him any further after Yesavage ramped up quickly in hopes of a postseason run.

Yesavage posted a 3.69 ERA over 97 2/3 innings this season, losing a month off the top due to a shoulder impingement, and later losing six weeks after undergoing left knee surgery to repair his meniscus. This wasn’t an ideal year by any means for Yesavage, but he should enter 2027 fully healthy and is still just 23 years old, loaded with upside.

“I’d like to limit the walks, then hopefully add a fourth pitch to the mix,” Yesavage said.

Yesavage lives on his fastball and excellent splitter, mixing in a slider, so a fourth pitch is a great project for him to take that next step.

“I’m dabbling around with a curveball or a two-seamer,” Yesavage said, “but we’ll see what works best.”

2. What does the 2027 rotation look like?

If the season started tomorrow, the Blue Jays would roll out a top three of Dylan Cease, José Soriano and Yesavage. That’s a fine place to start, especially if the Blue Jays get the version of Soriano they’re expecting.

Beyond that, Cody Ponce will be back from his ACL injury, but coming off what’s essentially been a lost season, how much of a workload will he have? There’s also the potential for José Berríos or Bowden Francis to return later in the season, along with prospects making the jump and the high likelihood that the Blue Jays acquire another mid-rotation starter. If we learned anything this season, it’s that “too many starting pitchers” is never possible.

The wild card? Spencer Miles. The Rule 5 wonder has been one of the best stories of 2026 in a variety of roles, but he has “starter” written all over him.

“We’re trying to find the perfect spot for the number of innings we want to get him to next year,” manager John Schneider said. “Then, how do we do that and what role do we do that in?”

Miles threw an inning Saturday, leaving him with a 2.63 ERA over 95 2/3 innings in his rookie season. All of this comes after he’d barely pitched in the lower Minor League levels prior to being selected in the Rule 5, so it’s already extremely impressive that he’s made this much of a jump in workload. The next steps will need to be handled carefully.

“When you look at where he is now, you tack on 20-30 [innings] to that next year,” Schneider said. “If all goes well in the offseason, that could turn into a No. 5 starter, just in terms of managing his workload. I think he has the stuff to do it. You have to be pretty convicted in a plan based on his background.”

3. Status check: Ernie Clement

Clement is a fan favorite for good reason and looked great through the first four months of the season, but things have gone downhill since the first of August. Clement came into that month with an OPS of .738, but that’s since fallen to .652 and he’s homered just once over the past two months.

“He’s played a lot. I wonder, ‘Did I play him too much in the second half?’” Schneider said. “I think he was, at times, trying to swing his way out of it. Then, you lead yourself down a path of swinging at bad pitches. We know that Ernie can hit everything, but he was really good early in the season on narrowing the strike zone, and I think that got a bit bigger as the season went on.”

Clement still profiles as someone who could play 150 games for the Blue Jays next season, but whether that comes as a full-time second-baseman or with some more utility opportunities remains to be seen.