DUNEDIN, Fla. -- Trey Yesavage has come back down to earth to live with the rest of us. He’s back in baseball’s reality now.
Yesavage’s debut was historic, a 22-year-old superstar who climbed from Single-A to the World Series in a single season, baffling hitters at every stop. He’d be a hero in Toronto if he retired tomorrow, but now Yesavage has all of this potential stretched out ahead of him, even if there’s a little less adrenaline on these slow days in February.
We haven’t seen Yesavage in a Spring Training game yet, and we might not for another week. This is all by design after Yesavage threw 139 2/3 innings last season. While Toronto’s other starters are all ramping up normally, the Blue Jays are handling Yesavage as his own, incredibly unique case.
“It’s a little slower, obviously,” manager John Schneider said. “He went from having the longest offseason possible after he got drafted to the shortest one possible after his first full year.”
After the Blue Jays drafted Yesavage in July 2024, they shut him down for the rest of the season following his 93 1/3 innings in NCAA ball. That’s a long layoff before his pro debut in ‘25, but since then he’s pitched in the highest-stress games imaginable. The Blue Jays want to find some sense of “normal” for Yesavage.
“We’re just trying to be strategic,” Schneider said. “Looking at the broad picture, I think it would be unrealistic to say, ‘All right, Trey, first year in the big leagues, here’s your 32 starts and your 200 innings.’ We’re trying to stay aware of that, and there’s probably going to be some times where you have to hone him in a little bit if you can maneuver the rotation a little bit.”
It’s so hard to resist the temptation of Yesavage’s talent. He looks like the front-of-the-rotation starter this organization has dreamed of developing since the days of Roy Halladay. Those same words have been said plenty of times in Toronto over the last 15 years, though.
Alek Manoah comes to mind, but those 2021-22 seasons disappeared. Nate Pearson was supposed to be the next big thing, but it never happened. Aaron Sanchez had flashes of greatness, but they fizzled. Ricky Romero felt like he could be that guy, too, which stretches us all the way back to Halladay’s years.
Health is the biggest factor in all of this. It can be managed, but never truly controlled. The human body was not designed to throw baseballs 100 mph. Elbow ligaments and shoulders are being pushed harder and further than ever before. Teams and players can do their best, but that’s it. The easiest way to approach this is by controlling workload, which is exactly how the Blue Jays are entering 2026 with Yesavage. The details, they’ll figure out along the way.
“We don’t want to pigeonhole it and say that we’re going to cut five or six starts off his season,” Schneider said. “If there’s a time to adjust, to skip a guy or to push a guy back, yeah. You’ve got to look at the schedule and look at what other people are doing, but I don’t want to say it’s reactionary. If he’s feeling great, then great, but history has shown it’s hard to say, ‘Hey, 22-year-old Trey, here’s 32 Major League starts, go strike out 12 every night.’”
This could take so many different shapes, depending on how Yesavage responds.
There could be a planned shutdown period for Yesavage midway through the season, where the Blue Jays ease him off and build him back up. There could be a two-month stretch in the middle where he’s capped closer to 80 pitches, to keep something in the tank for later. Here and there, the Blue Jays could work in a sixth starter or skip Yesavage’s spot.
All of these solutions point a big, red arrow towards Eric Lauer. He wants to start for this team, as he should, and while that still feels unlikely as a member of a traditional rotation, it’s easy to see Lauer’s pathway to 120 innings. Any swingman who gives the Blue Jays flexibility to pull off this plan with Yesavage immediately becomes one of the most important pitchers on the roster.
It’s an easy plan to sell to Yesavage, too, now that he already has a taste of what it feels like when a season goes right. First, he’ll just need to grind through some “normal” big league starts, which don’t all end in champagne celebrations.