LOS ANGELES — There are places on this earth a person can go to test the thickness of their skin and the resolve of their fight-or-flight instinct. Death Valley. The Danakil Depression. Everest. The visiting bullpen at Dodger Stadium.
Toronto Blue Jays 22-year-old pitcher Trey Yesavage, who only started pitching professionally six months ago, stepped into the toxicity of Chavez Ravine about 20 minutes before World Series Game 5 Wednesday, preparing for the first road postseason start of his budding career.
“You’ll never make it through two innings!” someone shouted. “Make it one!” said another. “You’re going to give up a lot of home runs!”
Decorum allows that those are among the few barbs that can be shared.
What happened next was the harbinger to what would be one of the greatest displays of pitching the World Series has ever seen.
Yesavage turned to his pitching coach, Pete Walker, and said, “I love this!” He recalled later, “That was so much fun, with the way everybody was hating me.”
Once Yesavage stepped on the game mound, the Dodgers, the defending National League champions, the highest scoring team in the league and a team that had just seen him five days ago, had no chance. Yesavage and the Blue Jays overwhelmed the Dodgers in a 6–1 victory that puts Toronto one game from the World Series title. Its first chance is Game 6 Friday.
Yesavage set World Series records for the most strikeouts without a walk (12), most strikeouts by a rookie pitcher and most swings and misses (23) in the pitch-tracking era, which began in 2008.
He did it all with a weird, mechanical delivery in which he takes a short stride and windmills the ball home from a high release point. Yesavage pitches like a man changing a light bulb while standing reluctantly and perilously on a ladder.
”So, I think he was very comfortable there,” Walker said. “I'd been here for a couple of days, seen the atmosphere. He wasn't overwhelmed by any stretch. I could tell by his warmup.
“He locked in, had great things to say, had a great approach. And really, you know, even from the first few warmup hits, I have a good feel for when someone's gonna be on, to be honest with you. And I felt like he was gonna be on here.”
Yesavage threw seven innings while continuing to keep the Dodgers in a deep October funk. The Dodgers must win Game 6 behind Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
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Yesavage’s accelerated path to stardom
It was only a year ago that Yesavage entered the draft out of East Carolina. He was a consensus top five pick but slid because of concerns about his medicals. The Mariners rated him among the top two picks in the draft but passed because of injury concerns. The Jays snapped him up at 20. The first thing everybody noticed about him was his goofy, aw-sucks mannerisms. He started the next season, this year, at Class A. Word began to spread about this amazing giraffe of a pitcher.
“You know, when we drafted him, we obviously had a video and we looked at him and you’re like, “Oh, boy, that kid's gonna be really good,’” Walker said. “But even early on, because it is a funky delivery, funky release, it seemed like early on watching a lot of balls that were in the dirt were [inducing swings].”
Said Kevin Gausman, “I knew we drafted him. Honestly, the first video I saw of him throwing after the draft, I was kinda like, ‘Wow, what is this?’ It kind of jumps out. It's funky, it's kind of head, head towards the other.”
Yesavage hit every rung on the ladder before making his MLB debut Sept. 15.
“ Honestly,” Walker said, “we're hearing about him punching everybody out and I don't think anybody here honestly thought they would see him here. I honestly thought only of him getting to the big leagues and getting his feet wet, as opposed to getting the big leagues and dominating the World Series.”
Split-finger determined success
The Jays are 7–1 when Yesavage starts, the only loss being a clunker in ALCS Game 1 in which his signature split went missing. But with Walker’s help, and relying more on feel than a mechanical tweak, Yesavage found his elusive butterfly of a pitch.
“The last game he really had a tough time locating it,” Walker said. “He felt like it was not in his hand properly and just had a tough time getting the action he was looking for. So we went to the slider a little bit more last time, used more fastballs, but we knew we had to have the split today.”
His split in Game 5 was devastating. He threw 30 of them. The Dodgers tried to hit it 10 times. They missed seven times. He threw seven innings making the Dodgers and their taunting fans look foolish.
“He told me, ‘I love this,’ before it started,” Walker said. “I could tell he was comfortable. He was very comfortable to me. And he was fired up. Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t like he was just going normally about his business. He was fired up, but he was in a comfort zone.”
The Dodgers prepped for the game by hitting off a virtual Yesavage in the Trajekt robotic pitching machine. The machine adjusts itself to match the exact release point and pitch shape of Yesavage.
“Once we set it,” one Dodger said, “it kept raising and raising until it was as far as it could go.” The high-tech pitching machine, the team source said, goes for about $300,000 with another annual fee of about $100,000 for software. The machine was invented by two former engineering students at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, about two miles from Toronto.
It didn’t help the Dodgers, nor did seeing him a second time in five days.
“Just complete dominance,” Gausman said. “When he has his split,” said teammate Max Scherzer, “it’s borderline unhittable.”
By the end of the night, Yesavage had himself a place as one of the greatest phenoms in World Series history, not to mention a $140 bottle of tequila in his locker as a reward from teammates for a job well done.