Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Trey Yesavage reacts after Seattle Mariners centre fielder Julio Rodríguez hit a three run home run during the first inning of Game 2 of the American League Championship Series in Toronto on Monday.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press
Everybody loves the story of an overnight success. Toronto, maybe too much. Toronto’s so excited to meet you that it wants to hug you unconscious.
Four weeks ago, 22-year-old pitcher Trey Yesavage was nobody. If you’d heard of him, you need to spend less time in the scouting blogs and more in the real world.
By Thanksgiving weekend, Yesavage was the second coming. He was Nolan Ryan, but nice. After manhandling the Yankees in the divisional series, he held back tears in the on-field interview. Everyone who wasn’t already in love swooned.
Ahead of Game 1 against Seattle, in what was supposed to be a by-the-numbers pitching announcement, Yesavage gave a confusing statement about how “people close to me are being attacked for my performance.”
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Since Yesavage’s performances thus far had been future hall of fame level, it wasn’t clear what he was talking about, but Yesavage declined to give a fuller explanation.
You know how you don’t brush back anonymous ding-dongs on the internet? By getting the media together so that you can announce to the world how much they’re getting to you.
Toronto manager, John Schneider, said as much when he was asked what advice he’d given his youngest charge on the topic of online abuse: “For one, welcome to the club, Trey.”
But Toronto loves a young lad in distress. When he was introduced on Sunday, Yesavage got the loudest cheer of any Blue Jay. Louder than Vlad Guerrero Jr. or George Springer or any of the other Jays who have been working at the highest level for many years, rather than a few days.
You were starting to get a bad feeling about what Toronto expects from a kid who was schlepping his own luggage to the bus a month ago. Whatever it is, it’s too much.
Schneider shrugged off the suggestion that all this might all be a lot for Yesavage: “I don’t think it’s going to affect him at all [on Monday].”
Trey Yesavage leaves the game during the fifth inning against the Seattle Mariners in Game 2 of the American League Championship Series in Toronto on Monday.Vaughn Ridley/Getty Images
Yesavage’s first inning on Monday: hit batsman, walk, home run, strikeout, single, strikeout, strikeout. I think it affected him a little.
Yesavage pulled it together, and Seattle starter Logan Gilbert was even more rattled. The game settled into a nervy tie.
In the fifth, the first Seattle batter reached second after a throwing error to first. The second was baseball-compacting machine Cal Raleigh. He was intentionally walked.
At that point, Schneider came out to pull Yesavage. A sizable portion of the crowd booed him.
Two batters later, reliever Louis Varland gave up a three-run home run to dead centre.
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The Jays continued to go to pieces for the rest of the game. It ended 10-3. A few of the few who remained for the whole thing booed the team off the field. All the good vibes that animated the city just a few hours ago were bleeding off.
Yesavage was asked afterward to describe his outing – “Nothing was spectacular today.”
That’s his current bar – spectacular.
After that, he went on about how that’s a “special group we have in there,” like he has any idea.
Was Schneider wrong to take Yesavage out? Absolutely. Despite the whingeing of baseball managers, there is only one way to judge the rightness or wrongness of a baseball decision. That’s ‘Did it work?’ This one didn’t work.
Two games down and already looking out of their depth, someone will have to be blamed for the Jays’ looming disappointment. The leading contender, by quite a stretch, is Schneider. Welcome back to the club, John.
Toronto Blue Jays manager John Schneider pulls Jays pitcher Trey Yesavage from Monday's game.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press
Schneider’s bad choice has another unintended effect. Monday was Toronto’s chance to see that Yesavage is fallible. Of course he is. He doesn’t even know how to protect himself when some bozo on Instagram gives him the gears, and the Jays aren’t helping him figure that out. How can he be expected to navigate everything that’s coming at him at speed, all alone?
But after Schneider’s decision, Yesavage is even more sanctified. Not only is he great, he’s a victim of the Jays’ managerial timidity. Give him one more chance and he’ll fix all this.
Alek Manoah leaps to mind – another talented young Jays pitcher suffocated by expectation. Manoah had a couple of years to adapt to becoming everyone’s favourite Jay. Yesavage is doing it in days, under a much brighter light.
You want the kid to have every opportunity to succeed, but a smart team thinks long term. The Jays rotation is geriatric. Yesavage is the bridge to the future. This series matters, but so does the next 10 years.
What you absolutely don’t want to do is break Yesavage’s spirit for the sake of two weeks of marketing hype. But the Jays don’t seem to get that. They haven’t learned any of the lessons of Manoah.
Alek Manoah throws to a Chicago White Sox batter during the first inning of a baseball game in May, 2024.Erin Hooley/The Associated Press
That means tapping the brakes on the saviour shtick, even if it’s what people want. It means shifting the onus onto guys who’ve invited huge pressure via the size of their paycheque.
The person who should be feeling the burden of Toronto’s season is Game 3 starter, Shane Bieber, winner of a Cy Young Award.
Assuming Max Scherzer pitches Game 4, he should feel the pressure of the entire organization pressing down on him. Absorbing pressure is his job.
But if you watched the pregame, you’d think Bieber and Scherzer were Yesavage’s understudies, not the other way around.
There is a world in which Yesavage is in position to save the year in Game 6. Were I in charge of the Jays, my goal now would be to mention his name and hype his possibilities as little as possible until and if that happens.
You want a rescuer? Ask someone who has some idea what the job entails.