When Trey Yesavage made his first postseason start for the Toronto Blue Jays and struck out 11 New York Yankees, it was fair for Seattle Mariners fans to wonder why he was not the Mariners’ first-round draft pick in 2024. <\/p>\n
Seattle, of course, passed on Yesavage in 2024 in favor of switch-pitcher<\/a> Jurrangelo Cjintje, despite many analysts who believed Yesavage was the better and more MLB-ready prospect. Seattle instead determined Cjintje to have a higher ceiling, likely due to his unique ability to throw with both hands. <\/p>\n Mariners fans’ concerns were put to rest when their club beat Yesavage in Game 2 of the ALCS, but he returned to dominate them in a crucial Game 6. The young pitcher continued to pitch well in the World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers, arguably the best pitcher on the Blue Jays’ staff. <\/p>\n Jurrangelo Cijntje’s progression is now happening in the shadow of Trey Yesavage’s quick rise<\/p>\n Obviously, it is still very early in the careers of the kids drafted in 2024. Yesavage, after all, has made just three regular-season MLB starts. Despite his impressive playoff run, it is far too early to proclaim him as the next ace pitcher in the MLB. There is a chance that he turns out to be an average pitcher who happened to have a great postseason in his first crack at the big leagues, similar to Michael Wacha back in 2013<\/a>.<\/p>\n Once batters adjust to Yesavage, will he ever be as filthy as he was in the 2025 postseason? We can’t predict. <\/p>\n Still, it’s fair for Mariners fans to raise their expectations for Cjintje after seeing what the Mariners were missing. It sure would have been nice to have a fresh, young, MLB-ready arm to take over when Bryan Woo went down in September with a pectoral injury. <\/p>\n If Cjintje turns out to be a bust, the Mariners will probably look back at the 2024 draft class as an all-time missed opportunity to add a young arm like Yesavage into the mix. Again, we have no idea if Cjintje will turn out to be great or if he will be a bust. What we do know is that Yesavage was starting in the World Series, while Cjintje finished the year<\/a> with a 3.99 ERA in the minor leagues. <\/p>\n It’s probably unfair to Cjintje that he will be compared to Yesavage, who was always the more MLB-ready player. But it is the nature of sports for two players with this kind of link to be compared to one another, probably for their entire careers. <\/p>\n It is ultimately up to Cjintje to live up to the hype<\/a>. He’ll likely arrive in the MLB in late 2026 or early 2027, and when he does, he’ll hopefully be just as filthy as Yesavage was in 2025. Even if Cjintje does not continue to throw with both arms, he can still be effective as a right-handed pitcher. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Trey Yesavage made his first postseason start for the Toronto Blue Jays and struck out 11 New…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286573,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-286572","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}