All the\u00a0Toronto Blue Jays\u00a0have known from\u00a0Trey Yesavage\u00a0is dominance, which is why expectations can be so easily skewed, perspective so easily lost when it comes to the still rookie right-hander.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u2019s grandest stages 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 strikeout 12 batters without issuing any walks during a World Series game in his Game 5 gem.<\/p>\n
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, one that raises questions about what\u2019s reasonable to expect.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a good question,\u201d manager John Schneider said before Yesavage held the Red Sox to four hits and struck out three in an efficient 74-pitch season debut. \u201cWhen 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\u2019s adrenaline, that is the moment, that is all sorts of stuff that you can\u2019t really replicate.<\/p>\n
\u201cReasonable 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\u2019s 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\u2019s going to have to make adjustments to that. That\u2019s what we\u2019re looking for and trying to stay ahead of it with him.\u201d<\/p>\n
To that end, Tuesday\u2019s outing was a good start.<\/p>\n
This wasn\u2019t 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He had to work around traffic in the first and second innings before he started rolling and didn\u2019t get his first strikeout until the fourth, when Wilyer Abreu went down swinging. That didn\u2019t matter, as he showed he can string together outs even without his best swing-and-miss stuff.<\/p>\n
And, of the utmost importance while the Blue Jays offence works to find steady production, he put up zeroes before Kazuma Okamoto\u2019s two-run single in the third opened the scoring and after the fifth, when Vladimir Guerrero Jr.\u2019s RBI single extended the advantage.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
As the first of 13 Blue Jays on the injured list to return, Yesavage\u2019s outing \u201cis welcome\u201d on a roster that\u2019s experienced far more exits than returns thus far.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere 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,\u201d said Schneider. \u201cWhen you\u2019re missing some key guys, it\u2019s 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\u2019re used to doing, if that makes sense. So, it\u2019ll help everyone as these guys get back, not just their contributions, but I think it\u2019ll kind of have a domino effect on everyone just taking a deep breath.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All the\u00a0Toronto Blue Jays\u00a0have known from\u00a0Trey Yesavage\u00a0is dominance, which is why expectations can be so easily skewed, perspective…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":635908,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194291],"tags":[49,48,3302],"class_list":["post-635907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-toronto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635907","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=635907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/635908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}