SEATTLE -- What a welcome this has been for rookie Trey Yesavage, who just keeps landing in the biggest games of the Blue Jays’ season.
Yesavage has been named the Blue Jays’ Game 6 starter, which will give him the opportunity to either save the season or pitch this organization to its first World Series since 1993, a decade before he was even born.
No pressure, kid.
"I feel like his last three starts in the big leagues have been pretty big games, and he's responded well," Blue Jays manager John Schneider said on Friday. "You kind of lose sight of the fact that he's 22, you know, and you bring him up with 12 days left in the season, and you're not asking him to just get his feet wet. You're asking him to go win games. So he's stepped up to the challenge."
Yesavage’s teammates all say the same things. Sure, the big heater and his devastating splitter are a fine starting point, but baseball is full of pitchers with arm talent. That will only get you so far.
Veterans like Max Scherzer and Kevin Gausman point to Yesavage’s maturity on the mound, which is what’s allowed the Blue Jays to trust him in such big moments. After pitching with opportunities to clinch both a postseason spot and the AL East in late September, Yesavage has kept this rolling with a pair of Game 2 starts in the ALDS and ALCS. Those May and June starts next year might feel like Spring Training games to him after all of this.
Game 2 against the Mariners was Yesavage’s first stumble in the big leagues. He looked better than the five runs over four innings suggests, but still, the Mariners provided the first blueprint for beating Yesavage in the big leagues and now they get to use it again. They laid off his splitter far better than the Yankees did, which feels like the secret sauce here, and Julio Rodríguez delivered the big blow with a home run.
Given that Saturday is a day off prior to Game 6, the Blue Jays should have a full, fresh bullpen behind Yesavage if they need it.
If a Game 7 is necessary, this also lines up Shane Bieber for what could be the biggest start of his career. Despite a tough first inning in Game 3 of this series, it feels like Bieber has finally found something.
After allowing a home run to Rodríguez in the first, Bieber came back into the Blue Jays’ dugout imploring his teammates to pick him up. Bieber knew that he had good stuff on the mound and was so confident that he could shut the Mariners down the rest of the way if his lineup gave him some help. He was right, and went on to strike out eight hitters over six innings in the win.
It’s all up to Yesavage first, though. Game 6 could arguably be this organization’s biggest game since that World Series run in ‘93, and once more, they turn to the rookie who feels like he’s been here all along.