Copyright Athlon Sports
Highlights: The Toronto Blue Jays are giving the Game 5 World Series start to 22-year-old rookie Trey Yesavage. It will be his first playoff start on the road after four postseason starts at home. If the Blue Jays are facing elimination Wednesday night, Yesavage will be on the mound with the season at stake — again. He’s pitched in only one other MLB road park in the regular season. Every playoff start so far has been in Toronto. Trey Yesavage is 22, a month removed from his first big-league start, and on Wednesday night in Los Angeles he will be trying to get the Toronto Blue Jays within a win of a World Series championship. The rookie right-hander will start Game 5 at Dodger Stadium, SportsNet reported. It’s a massive stage for anyone — and it’s the first postseason start of his life that won’t be at Rogers Centre. All four of his previous playoff starts, including Game 1 of this World Series, were at home. “Each day I learn something new,” Yesavage told reporters. “I take something away from my game or someone else’s game. So just stacking all those days up this entire season has led me to this point.” The Dodger Stadium test This setting, however, is new. Sportsnet noted that Yesavage will be making his first postseason road start in Game 5; all four of his playoff starts so far have come in Toronto. He’s barely had any MLB road exposure at all. He debuted against the Rays in a temporary home park situation, then got one look on the road later in Kansas City. That’s it. Now? It’s Dodger Stadium in October. Dodger Stadium and its wall of sound in late October is not Kauffman Stadium in mid-September. Asked if anyone in the clubhouse tried to prep him for what that environment feels like, Yesavage basically shrugged it off: “No, no one has said really much about it. We play in front of big crowds too, so we’re ready.” That sounds like bravado. It’s also sort of earned. Toronto just came through a seven-game ALCS with sellout crowds and “this could end tonight” energy. In Game 6 vs. Seattle, with the Blue Jays facing elimination, Yesavage carried a shutout into the sixth and helped force a Game 7. “I’ve pitched with our back against the wall already,” he said. “I have experienced it.” Who Trey Yesavage already is to the Blue Jays Here’s the fast-forward version of his year, because it barely sounds real. Yesavage was drafted in the first round in 2024. He opened 2025 in Single-A Dunedin in April, then bulldozed his way up every level of the Toronto Blue Jays’ system. He struck out 160 hitters in 98 minor-league innings with a 3.12 ERA and a 0.97 WHIP. Toronto called him up on Sept. 15. In his MLB debut that night against the Tampa Bay Rays, he struck out nine over five innings, allowed just one run in an 11-inning win and set a franchise record for strikeouts in a debut. A week later, he pitched on the road in Kansas City. He wrapped his first regular season with three starts: 1-0, a 3.21 ERA, 16 strikeouts in 14.0 total innings and a 1.43 WHIP. That alone would be a “this kid might be something” September call-up story. But then October hit. Yesavage jumped straight into playoff baseball. In the ALDS against the Yankees, he threw 5 1/3 no-hit innings, struck out 11, and helped Toronto beat New York 13-7 to take control of the series. He set Blue Jays postseason strikeout marks and became one of the youngest pitchers ever to punch out double digits in a playoff start. He then started twice in the ALCS against the Mariners — including Game 6, when Toronto was facing elimination — and got the ball again in Game 1 of the World Series against the Dodgers. Through four postseason starts, Yesavage is 2-1 with a 4.26 ERA, 27 strikeouts and a 1.26 WHIP across 19.0 playoff innings. That’s 12.8 K per nine from a pitcher who was facing High-A hitters in April. “Being a rookie that’s 22 years old and having that weight put on your shoulders, it’s a big deal,” he said. “But everyone in this clubhouse has my back.” The Blue Jays have managed him like a weapon, not a mascot John Schneider, the Blue Jays’ manager, has basically treated Yesavage like a frontline piece, not a novelty arm. “With each passing day he’s here he gets more comfortable,” Schneider said. “We did that a little bit intentionally in the New York series.” Toronto lined up his early postseason turns to keep him at home — not at Yankee Stadium, not on the road in Seattle — so the rookie could keep his “feet on the ground,” stay on normal rest and get used to playoff noise without also having to handle a hostile crowd. There was a competitive wrinkle, too. Opponents haven’t had many live looks at Yesavage, and visiting hitters don’t get the benefit of Toronto’s in-house Trajekt machine, which can recreate an opposing pitcher’s release point and pitch shapes. You can’t really simulate him until you’ve already worn him. And his look is not normal. Yesavage’s fastball rides in the mid-90s with late life, he pairs it with a splitter in the mid-80s, and his breaking ball plays like a hybrid slider/splitter. He delivers from an unusually high release point — over seven feet — which makes the ball feel like it’s coming downhill forever. That’s how you get 27 strikeouts in your first 19 postseason innings. Schneider’s point, though, is that this wasn’t about hiding him. It was about sequencing him. “Knowing that he was going to be on normal rest for Game 1, be on normal rest again for tomorrow,” Schneider said. The plan was: let him breathe, let him see October, then drop him in the deep end. Now the deep end is Dodger Stadium and Yesavage holds the Blue Jays season in his hands.
