TORONTO — All the Toronto Blue Jays have known from Trey Yesavage is dominance, which is why expectations can be so easily skewed, perspective so easily lost when it comes to the still rookie right-hander.
Sure, he made essential starts in the final days of the chase for an American League East title and then shoved for an extra month in the post-season, making peak performance on the game’s grandest stage seem all so routine. He struck out 39 batters in the post-season, more than any rookie before him, and became the first pitcher to strike out 12 batters without issuing any walks in a World Series outing in his Game 5 gem.
Yet this is all still new for the 22-year-old, from lining up for opening day introductions despite being on the injured list, to toeing the rubber on a random Tuesday night in April for just another day in the 162-game grind. As spectacular as the short burst last fall was, the long haul, the one he began with 5.1 shutout innings in a 3-0 win over the Boston Red Sox, is an entirely different challenge, and it’s worth asking what’s reasonable to expect of him.
“That's a good question,” manager John Schneider said before Yesavage held the Red Sox to four hits and struck out three in an efficient 74-pitch season debut. “When you look at peak performance in the post-season, in the World Series and especially the game where he strikes out 12 and goes seven innings, that's adrenaline, that is the moment, that is all sorts of stuff that you can't really replicate.
“Reasonable expectation for Trey and for us is to just really understand how to get ready to pitch every five or six days, whatever it is. He's going to make some adjustments along the way. Hitters are going to make some adjustments. The relative unknown and uniqueness of his delivery will go away at some point and he's going to have to make adjustments to that. That's what we're looking for and trying to stay ahead of it with him.”
To that end, Tuesday’s outing was a good start.
This wasn’t the same Yesavage who overpowered the New York Yankees, Seattle Mariners and Los Angeles Dodgers in the post-season, instead inducing weak contact on a night he managed only five whiffs on 38 swings. He sat 94.3 m.p.h. with his fastball, holding his velocity through a fifth inning of work, and paired it with his split while mixing in six sliders.
"I was very happy with the fastball location. Was able to spot it on the corners, up and down, everything was good,” he said, adding that success through weak contact “just makes me confident. I know I broke a lot of bats tonight, so that's as good as a strikeout to me. I was just out there feeling myself.”
He had to work around traffic in the first and second innings before he started rolling and didn’t get his first strikeout until the fourth, when Wilyer Abreu went down swinging. That didn’t matter, as he showed he can string together outs even without his best swing-and-miss stuff.
"He's going to have to do that sometimes,” said Schneider. “Overall, he pitched really well with no walks and stuff got better as it went, which is really encouraging, too.”
And, of the utmost importance while the Blue Jays' offence works to find steady production, he put up zeroes before Kazuma Okamoto’s two-run single in the third opened the scoring and after the fifth, when Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s RBI single extended the advantage.
Yesavage left to a standing ovation after striking out Willson Contreras to open the sixth, and Mason Fluharty, Jeff Hoffman, Tyler Rogers and Louis Varland, handling the ninth for his fourth save, locked down the victory.
"That's him,” Guerrero said of Yesavage through interpreter Hector Lebron. “He came back the way he finished the season last year. That's him.”
As the first of 13 Blue Jays on the injured list to return, Yesavage’s outing “is welcome” on a roster that’s experienced far more exits than returns thus far.
George Springer, who faced live pitching and ran the bases for a second straight day, could return as soon as Wednesday, when Eric Lauer starts against Brayan Bello in the series finale. Behind him may be Jose Berrios, who had an uneven rehab outing with triple-A Buffalo, sitting 91.9 m.p.h. with his fastball while allowing five runs on five hits and two walks with two strikeouts on 70 pitches over four innings.
They’ll try to do what Yesavage did in providing a lift for a team in need of one.
“It feels great,” Guerrero said of the looming reinforcements. “I know they don't want to be in the position that they are in right now, but it is what it is. In the meantime, we're going to keep working hard and trying to keep (winning) as much as we can.”
Schneider relayed how, during the first inning, he turned to pitching coach Pete Walker and noted how the Blue Jays have lacked the feeling of having everyone around, which makes sense because they haven’t.
That made seeing Yesavage do his thing all the more enjoyable.
“There are going to be more exits over the course of the year, hopefully not at the rate they were happening or that have happened already,” said Schneider. “When you're missing some key guys, it's hard to form an identity on the fly or to try not to do too much on the fly. So as we get these guys back, you get a little bit back to normal and you get back to just what you're used to doing, if that makes sense. So, it'll help everyone as these guys get back, not just their contributions, but I think it'll kind of have a domino effect on everyone just taking a deep breath.”
Yesavage is a big part of that, and while it may be unreasonable to expect that he’ll simply pick up at the incredibly high level where he left off, his return Tuesday night was a reminder to not put anything past him, either.
