Future Blue Jays Newsletter

Welcome to the special Trey Yesavage edition.

First off - I’m a Day One Blue Jays guy, whose parents allowed him to take the afternoon off school to watch that snowy home opener nearly a half century ago.

And I have never seen such a scintillating starting pitching debut as Yesavage’s performance last night.

He had his moments in the first inning - which is to be expected. Not only has that been Trey’s routine with each start at a new level, but with a number of pitchers in the organization. As much as the Blue Jays have changed their pitching philosophy to Owning the Zone, subconsciously, as a pitcher reaches a new level, they know they’ll be facing guys who don’t chase as much as those at his former level did. And that tends to make them nibble, whether they realize it or not, often out of a fear that their stuff won’t be quite as good, or if they’re in the zone with it too much, they’ll get hit.

But when Andres Gimenez made that nice play on a slow roller over Yesvage’s head in the first inning, that seemed to slow the game down for the organization’s top pitching prospect. After allowing that first inning run, he went on a bat-missing spree.

And I suspect this start on this date in this location was the plan for Yesavage all along. So much of his season was mapped out beforehand. While he easily had the talent to start at AA, the pitching development staff knew he had some things to work on, most noticeably a third pitch - he even resurrected his curveball at Dunedin. Low A hitters were no match for Yesavage, but as my regular readers will know, farm director Joe Sclafani told me back in June that their analysts had done studies on the effect of the cold, moisture-laded Pacific air of the Northwest League on pitch movement. Yesavage needed time against professional hitters, and as inexperienced as Florida State League competition might have been, to learn to harness command of all three of his pitches.

Finally came the promotion to Vancouver, but his time in a C’s uniform was brief. When I reached out to one of my contacts in the system (who spoke off the record) about his seemingly quick ascension to AA, he told me, “The battle is not with the league. We want to challenge him to be his big league self going forward, and he needs competition of the league to help that. AA will give him that.”

The plan for Yesavage to reach the big leagues, then, was already in place by June. As I have written, the jump from High A to AA is the biggest in the minors (outside of the leap from AAA to MLB). Guys at AA have a plan, whether it’s hunting a certain pitch and/or certain location. But Yesavage met and passed this challenge with flying colours.

It was at about this time that I had begun to take notice of his splitter. Initially, I thought he was using it more often, but it turns out that learning to command his fastball, especially to left-handed hitters, made the pitch even more effective. Again, I went to my source to ask what work they had done on the pitch with him. Surprisingly, the answer was not a whole lot. East Carolina, Yesavage’s college team, had worked with him extensively on the pitch. “We worked mostly on fastball command,” says the source. “We also worked on spin breakers to leverage difference off the split, for count leverage to both platoons……but the ticket is (his) fastball command. Being able to stick a heater in each quadrant when needed allows for his secondaries to play accordingly.”

This would fit with what Jays’ MiLB pitching director Justin Lehr told me last week. It’s not necessarily one pitch, but a pairing of pitches, with a third thrown in to keep hitters off balance that is the focus of their development plans. It was that fastball command, with the thought of the splitter in Tampa hitters’ heads, that was the key last night.

That Yesavage made his first start in a minor league park against a team that will not face him in the playoffs was all part of the plan; the date had probably been circled on the player development staff calendar since early in the season.

Now, I’m not quite ready to pencil him in as, say, a game three starter in the playoffs. Word is going to get around the league, and while his delivery is no doubt unique and hard to prepare for, there is a ton of video available for hitters to watch. It will be his next outing(s) that will really tell the tale. If there’s reason for optimism, it’s that all three of his pitches come from almost exactly the same release point; hitters will need multiple looks to pick up on other aspects of his delivery, and the Blue Jays have timed his debut to limit the chances of that.

And not to get too far ahead of ourselves here, but……I have gotten a definite sense that the organization views Gage Stanifer, who pitched at three levels himself this year, as being on at least the same level as Yesavage. Stanifer is a year behind in terms of development, but thinking about the two being in the rotation in the second half next season is truly nice to think about.