LOS ANGELES — In the moments before Game 5 of the World Series, Trey Yesavage was under attack. Warming up in the visitors bullpen in right field at Dodger Stadium, surrounded by Los Angeles Dodgers fans on both sides, the Toronto Blue Jays’ 22-year-old right-handed rookie weathered insults of all manner and variety. At one point, Yesavage took a breath, stepped off the mound and turned to pitching coach Pete Walker.
“This is fun,” Yesavage said. “I love this.”
Of all the improbable happenings amid the Blue Jays’ run to the cusp of their first championship in more than 30 years, none rivals the emergence of Yesavage. His first game this season came in April in Jupiter, Florida, for Single-A Dunedin. There were 327 fans in the stadium. His latest, on Wednesday night, was a seven-inning, no-walk, 12-strikeout masterpiece that thrust the Blue Jays to a 6-1 victory and sent them back to Toronto one win shy of a World Series title. It was a performance that muzzled the mouthy masses in right field and the remainder of the 52,175 who saw an all-time performance from a pitcher throwing in his eighth major league game.
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Against a lineup featuring three future Hall of Famers, in front of a crowd that understood the desperation Los Angeles would face with a Game 5 loss, Yesavage devastated the Dodgers over and over. They swung and missed 23 times, at his disappearing splitter and darting slider and carrying fastball. When they did make contact, it was mostly feeble; a solo home run from Kiké Hernández accounted for their lone run. Yesavage carved them like a pumpkin, appropriate considering the Blue Jays will attempt to secure their first championship since 1993 on Halloween.
In part because the kid taken with the No. 20 pick in last year’s draft went from Single-A to High-A to Double-A to Triple-A to the big leagues, where almost immediately everyone around him understood how he made such an ascent. Yesavage’s stuff is nasty, sure, but his demeanor — country boy who sees the big city as just another thing to conquer — exudes calmness and confidence without a whit of arrogance.
After Toronto’s Game 5 win, in which home runs by Davis Schneider and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. on the first and third pitches staked them to a lead they would not yield, Chris Bassitt and Shane Bieber, who together have thrown more than 2,000 major league innings and made 359 major league starts, sat next to each other in the clubhouse and simply marveled. They’ve known Yesavage for six weeks, and every outing — whether it was shutting down Tampa Bay in his debut or throwing 5⅓ no-hit innings with 11 strikeouts against the Yankees in his postseason debut — reinforces what they find most impressive about him.
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“How he was able to make Game 5 of the World Series, mentally, look like any other day,” Bassitt said. “It could’ve been May. You couldn’t tell. He’s just calm, and he’s got wholehearted belief in himself.”
Said Bieber: “It would be easy to say it’s an ignorance-is-bliss thing, but I don’t think it is. It’s full conviction in himself and his game plan and his stuff. When he’s got it, he’s got it. Look in his eyes. And he had it.”
Bassitt continued.
“When he gets his splitter going, I think he realizes the other team has no chance,” he said. “Because no one has been able to figure it out. Early on, when he had the split going, it was like: strap in, because you guys are gonna be in trouble.”
Trouble doesn’t fully describe the Dodgers’ fruitlessness against Yesavage in Game 5. In Game 1, he had operated with no control of his splitter, leaving him to navigate Los Angeles’ lineup handicapped. Between his bullpen session this week and catch play Tuesday, Yesavage said he found his splitter grip and entered Wednesday with faith in it. He was awake at 8:30 a.m., called his girlfriend, ate an egg sandwich and two pieces of sausage at breakfast with his parents and brother, showered and relaxed on the outdoor patio in his hotel room with his family. He went to the stadium ready to perform.
And once there, he made history, striking out more batters than any previous rookie in a World Series start.
“I saw something on Instagram that someone took a video of me on my phone saying I was locked in,” Yesavage said, “but I was just doomscrolling on TikTok and Instagram reels. I just keep it as chill as possible. I don’t change anything I say to myself, but I’m also just here to go to work. I try not to think about anything.”
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Head empty of concern, arm full of vigor, Yesavage stood atop the mound opposite two-time Cy Young winner Blake Snell and outdueled him. Yesavage felt good in the first inning. After striking out the side in the second, good evolved to great. And from there, every pitch was an attempted emasculation — fastballs up in the zone from the highest arm slot in the big leagues, and splitters and sliders in the bottom half that tease and tempt hitters into swinging even when they know they shouldn’t. Yesavage hunts strikeouts as if they’re prey, a quality that endeared him to another of the Blue Jays’ veteran starters.
“When they pulled him after 78 pitches in that Yankee start,” Max Scherzer said, “I was like, ‘Hey, would you have gone back out there and just navigated that?’ And he said, ‘No, I’m trying to strike everybody out.'”
Scherzer smiled.
“I know exactly what he’s talking about,” said Scherzer, he of 3,489 career punchouts. “You start smelling it. You start smelling, this is how I’m going to get you. I’m here to strike you out.”
Yesavage’s olfactory glands were working overdrive Wednesday. He struck out every Dodgers starter — and got their Nos. 2, 3 and 4 hitters, Will Smith, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman, two times apiece. Yesavage’s girlfriend, Taylor Frick, sent him photos throughout the game of her crying happy tears. Scherzer, manic as ever, celebrated a double play by yeeting sunflower seeds against the dugout wall. After a performance like that, in a moment so big, large displays of emotion are more than acceptable.
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Meanwhile, Yesavage remained cucumber cool. He makes it easy to forget sometimes how new this all is. He and Bieber had been talking recently about introducing Yesavage to some high-end alcohol, to enjoy the spoils of the big leagues.
“You like tequila?” Bieber said.
“I’m 22,” Yesavage said.
Bieber chuckled.
“You were just in college, weren’t you?” he said.
He was, at East Carolina, where he had pitched in big games in front of big crowds at North Carolina and North Carolina State. But there was nothing like this. Dodgers fans are notorious for their razzing in the right-field bullpen, relentless and nasty and boundary-smashing, all part of the experience. Yesavage, who had topped their team in Game 1, received the gamut.
“If I were a Dodgers fan, I would try to rattle him, too,” Bassitt said. “Given the fact that he is 22. Given the fact that he barely has pitched on the road. Given the fact that this is the World Series. I’d be talking s—. But the reality is, I don’t think many people realize it doesn’t faze him. He’s like, just wait until I get on the mound. I’ll show you.”
He showed them all right. Over 104 pitches, each thrown with the weight of a nation on his shoulders, he manifested his pregame feelings into something bigger and better.
This was fun. And he had every reason to love it.
