{"id":174986,"date":"2025-09-28T11:04:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T11:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/174986\/"},"modified":"2025-09-28T11:04:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T11:04:09","slug":"yesavage-steps-up-to-set-stage-for-blue-jays-gausman-to-clinch-al-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/174986\/","title":{"rendered":"Yesavage steps up to set stage for Blue Jays, Gausman to clinch AL East"},"content":{"rendered":"

TORONTO \u2013 Amid the varied slate of scenarios and contingencies the Toronto Blue Jays<\/a> worked through as Game 162 approached, Kevin Gausman<\/a> kept things simple for himself \u2013 just be ready to pitch.<\/p>\n

The ace right-hander will do just that in a high-stakes regular-season finale that decides who claims the American League East, a first-round bye and home-field advantage on the AL side of the post-season bracket, as the Toronto Blue Jays, 5-1 winners over the Tampa Bay Rays, and the New York Yankees, 6-1 victors over the Baltimore Orioles, each held serve Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n

You want drama? Here it is.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt blows my mind that you play so many games and it still comes down to the last one,\u201d said Gausman. \u201cNothing new to me, I’ve been in this situation before. In 2016, with the Orioles, it was us and the Jays playing for home-field advantage (in the wild-card game). In 2021 with the Giants, we won 107 games but going into the last game of the season, we didn’t know if we were going to be a wild card or win the division. Logan Webb threw a complete-game shutout and we won the division. In 2023 here, I went to bed thinking I was going to start the last game of the season, the Mariners lost, woke up and Wes Parsons started the game. So, I’ve been in this spot many times before. You take it in stride.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"WatchWatch Blue Jays vs. Rays on Sportsnet<\/p>\n

The Toronto Blue Jays will look to clinch the AL East with a win over the Tampa Bay Rays on Sunday. Catch the action on Sportsnet or Sportsnet+, starting at 3 p.m. ET \/ noon PT. <\/p>\n

Broadcast schedule<\/a><\/p>\n

Put simply, a win or a Yankees loss Sunday gives the Blue Jays their first AL East title since 2015, as though the rivals are tied atop the division, Toronto holds the tiebreaker.<\/p>\n

So, it\u2019s all in their own hands.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is baseball, huh?\u201d said Ernie Clement, who was in the middle of everything once again. \u201cAll 162 count. It’s a lot of fun and we’re happy to be in the position we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Getting them there was a third straight win, this one powered by five shutout innings from rookie Trey Yesavage<\/a> and a three-run second inning highlighted by Ernie Clement\u2019s two-run double and Andres Gimenez\u2019s RBI single. Clement helped create another run in the fifth when he singled, stole second and scored on Nathan Lukes\u2019 two-out RBI single, while Alejandro Kirk\u2019s solo shot leading off the seventh padded the advantage.<\/p>\n

Crucially Justin Bruihl, the lefty specialist who\u2019s risen to the occasion a few times during a season spent mostly at triple-A Buffalo with a handful of big-league stints, delivered a wipe-out inning of relief in the seventh to keep the game under wraps.<\/p>\n

And after another strong inning of work from Tommy Nance in the eighth, Seranthony Dominguez, with Jeff Hoffman down after closing out back-to-back games, handled the ninth before a raucous crowd of 42,624.<\/p>\n

\u201cBaseball’s funny, man \u2013 162 is a lot,\u201d said manager John Schneider. \u201cAnd then you look up and of course it comes down to 162, right, to try to get to where you want to get to. I think these guys will be equally ready for it (Sunday).\u201d<\/p>\n

The outing for Yesavage, his third since completing his remarkable rise from low-A to September games of consequence in the big-leagues, was especially encouraging as the Blue Jays consider how to best line up their pitching for the post-season, wild-card bye or not.<\/p>\n

Facing a Rays team he bullied in his debut a mere 11 days earlier, Yesavage was again in total command, his fastball sitting 95.3 m.p.h. and up to 96.9 m.p.h., while getting 14 whiffs on 47 swings, seven of them on his slider.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Perhaps most impressive is the way he picked up his defence in the third inning, when Gimenez bobbled a potential double-play grounder from Yandy Diaz that should have ended the inning. Yesavage responded by striking out Brandon Lowe, walked Junior Caminero to load the bases and then K\u2019d Jonathan Aranda, preserving the 3-0 lead.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s kind of the intangible stuff you’re looking for,\u201d said Schneider. \u201cWe were talking earlier about the person and the player, but to be able to slow that down, with a game that has a lot riding on it, obviously, was really good to see.\u201d<\/p>\n

The three extra batters likely cost him another inning of work, but the Rays didn\u2019t threaten meaningfully again, with a clever double-play in the fifth, when Lukes caught Boby Seymour\u2019s drive to right and threw to third where a tagging Chandler Simpson overslid the bag at third and was caught by an alert Addison Barger, erasing a potential threat.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis morning I was definitely thinking about (the stakes), but I did as much as I could to block that stuff out and just focus on the task at hand,\u201d Yesavage said of his mindset heading into the outing. \u201cPlaying in front of this crowd, it’s hard not to be fired up. Going out there for the first time is special. And if I could do it again tomorrow, I would. It was a lot of fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yesavage allowed five hits and two walks with five strikeouts, in an outing manager Schneider would be watching for how a Rays team \u201cmakes adjustments, if they do, and then what he does counteracting that.\u201d<\/p>\n

He noticed early that \u201cthey were sitting on the slow stuff more, so I started to beat them with the heater in the back half of my outing, just little adjustments like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rays manager Kevin Cash said the league\u2019s lack of familiarity with Yesavage could become an advantage in October as last week, \u201cnot having some of that lived experience in the batter’s box, facing that guy, that first time through the order, every one of our hitters were coming back and they were all referencing the challenge of a release point that’s very unique. They compared it to a Felix Bautista in Baltimore, so high, and you just don’t see that very often. Then you add on he’s got really good stuff with a split that can alter your timing. I can see how that could definitely help Toronto.\u201d<\/p>\n

So too would bypassing the wild-card round, allowing the Blue Jays to reset before opening a division series at home next Saturday. The alternative, hosting Game 1 of a wild-card series on Tuesday, isn\u2019t a bad consolation, but with control of their fate in their own hands, and Gausman on the mound, the preferable path is right there for the taking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO \u2013 Amid the varied slate of scenarios and contingencies the Toronto Blue Jays worked through as Game…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":174987,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":["post-174986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}