Rookie Yesavage pitches Blue Jays to brink of World Series title
A year and a half ago, Trey Yesavage was in college. Six months ago, he was in A ball. On Wednesday, he was at Dodger Stadium, pitching the Toronto Blue Jays to within one win of a World Series championship.
In a Game 5 start that evoked memories of baseball legends, the 22-year-old Blue Jays rookie defanged the Los Angeles Dodgers. He beat them with sliders they couldn’t hit and splitters they didn’t even try to hit. Through seven masterful innings, Yesavage baffled a lineup of veterans, All-Stars and MVPs, beating the Dodgers 6-1 and putting the Blue Jays on the verge of their first World Series title since 1993.
Game 6 is Friday night in Toronto, and if Blue Jays win it all, Yesavage will have been the final piece that made it possible.
Drafted last summer and called up in mid-September, Game 5 was only Yesavage’s eighth Major League start, and five of them have come in the playoffs. Throwing his slider twice as often as in his dominant postseason debut against the Yankees, Yesavage struck out 12, getting 14 swings-and-misses on his slider and eight called strikes on his split-finger. He allowed three hits and induced a total of 23 swings-and-misses.
Yesavage became the first rookie since Don Newcombe to reach double-digit strikeouts in a World Series game, and the first pitcher since Sandy Koufax with at least 10 strikeouts in the first five innings of a World Series game. He broke Smoky Joe Wood’s record for the most World Series strikeouts by a pitcher 22 or younger.
And Yesavage did it a month and a half after his big league debut.
He was up against a far more accomplished Dodgers starter in Blake Snell, a two-time Cy Young winner who came into this World Series as the hottest pitcher on the planet. Since Sept. 10 — in his last three starts of the regular season and his first three of the playoffs — Snell had pitched to a 0.68 ERA with 56 strikeouts in 40 innings.
But the Blue Jays have since beaten him twice in this series. They scored five runs off Snell in Game 1 and pounced on him immediately in Game 5.
Snell’s first pitch of the night was a fastball up in the zone, and Davis Schneider hit it 373 feet for a home run. Snell’s next two pitches were fastballs down and in, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit the second one 394 feet for another home run. It was the first time in World Series history that a team started a game with back-to-back homers, and the Blue Jays did it on three pitches.
Dodgers right fielder Teoscar Hernández misplayed a fourth-inning fly ball into a leadoff triple, which wound up costing Snell another run, and the Blue Jays added two more — off the Dodgers bullpen but charged to Snell — in the top of the seventh.
Yesavage returned to the mound for the bottom of the seventh and punctuated his masterpiece with one last strikeout and a double play. As Guerrero caught the final out of the inning, he roared toward the heavens while Yesavage strutted off the field, a rookie who just carved his name into World Series history and is one win away from having a World Series ring.
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What to watch for in Game 6
Are you interested in seeing an underdog clinch its first World Series championship in more than three decades, in front of its home fans at one of the loudest buildings in baseball?
Or are you interested in witnessing a behemoth with its back against the wall, having to win two elimination games on the road to defend its crown and be the game’s first repeat champion in 25 years?
Yes, there’s something about Game 6 that will get its hooks into you. I guarantee it.
It’s Yoshinobu Yamamoto vs. Kevin Gausman, a rematch of Game 2 when Gausman pitched beautifully into the seventh inning but Yamamoto pitched to near perfection. Yamamoto delivered the sport’s first complete game in the World Series in a decade. He scattered four hits, allowed a lone run, struck out eight and issued no walks. He was flawless. And he’ll have to be that bad man again in Game 6, unless the Dodgers offense wakes up and wins a game itself. (It’s not looking likely.)
Having now thrown back-to-back complete games, Yamamoto has a 1.57 ERA through four starts this postseason.
Gausman, who owns a 2.55 ERA this October, struck out six and walked none over 6 2/3 inning of three-run ball in Game 2. Home runs from Will Smith and Max Muncy, half of the four hits Gausman allowed on the night, were enough to do him in when Yamamoto held Toronto to one run.
Rogers Centre will be ready to explode throughout Game 6. And if a Game 7 awaits, it’ll be a scene unlike any other.
Shuffling the lineup or shuffling deck chairs?
The Dodgers’ lineup has been an issue all October, well before Dave Roberts shuffled his lineup ahead of Game 5 to better protect Shohei Ohtani. Some of the choices were sound — Alex Call, in theory, should work better counts than Andy Pages has, and Will Smith has been more of a threat than Mookie Betts — but it doesn’t matter when no one is hitting.
There was just about no answer for Trey Yesavage when his splitter was on. The Dodgers couldn’t hit Yesavage out of the game even in Game 1, when the rookie clearly had no feel for his fastball. The Dodgers have not punished mistakes during this run. Wednesday, they hardly had any to punish. The top four hitters in their lineup were 0-for-12 with seven strikeouts before Will Smith’s leadoff single against Jeff Hoffman in the ninth.
The Dodgers will leave Dodger Stadium having scored just four runs over their last 29 innings.
Mookie’s magic is missing
At 33 years old, Mookie Betts has three World Series rings and a Hall of Fame resume. This season, he excelled in the field as a full-time shortstop, and he has continued to play standout defense in October. But the hitting woes that afflicted him during his worst regular season at the plate have carried over. After hitting first or second in the lineup for every game since 2021, Betts moved to third in Game 5.
“There’s some mechanics,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said before the game. “They’re making good pitches. He’s working hard to kind of clean some things up.”
Yet Betts looked all but helpless against Yesavage on Wednesday, ending the first, third and fifth innings with two strikeouts and a groundout. He is 3-for-23 in the World Series, without an extra-base hit, and is a combined 9-for-55 in the NLDS, NLCS and World Series.
Jays ambushed Snell’s fastball, so he abandoned it
It’s no surprise what the Blue Jays were looking for to start Game 5. Davis Schneider was all over a first-pitch fastball to open the game and surprised everyone with a leadoff blast, even his father, who was sitting in the stands. Blake Snell immediately looked to pound the zone with two more fastballs on the inner half to Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who sent the second of those pitches into the Dodgers bullpen for the second quick jab.
Toronto went after the fastball, so Snell went away from it. He didn’t throw another fastball until his final pitch of his first time through the order, a heater he blew past Andrés Giménez for a strikeout to end the second inning. He threw just nine fastballs his second time through the order before starting to lean on the heater a little more to extend his outing.
All things considered, it’s a pivot Snell and the Dodgers needed to get deep into the game and keep giving his offense chances to find new life. The fact that Snell pitched into the seventh was a testament to his ability to get back into the game and the concerns of a bullpen behind it. Edgardo Henriquez became the latest Dodgers reliever to implode when given the opportunity, allowing the Blue Jays insurance runs the Dodgers could ill afford to relent.
It’s hardly been the World Series that Snell and the Dodgers expected for him — 10 runs in 11 2/3 innings — but he gave Los Angeles a chance Wednesday night.
Yesavage found his best weapon
Trey Yesavage wasn’t at full form in Game 1 of the World Series. He couldn’t locate his splitter and essentially gave up on the signature offering early in the game. The rookie threw just 10 splitters (13 percent of his offerings) in that 11-4 Jays win. It set him up for success in Game 5.
“It was kind of just a feel thing for that day,” manager John Schneider said before the game, “which can happen. It’s interesting — they’re seeing him again, but if the split is on, it’s a different version of what they saw.”
His splitter was indeed on.
Yesavage threw the pitch 30 times (29 percent), and hitters whiffed at it seven times. Called strikes and whiffs made up 50 percent (15 of 30) of the results.
He dropped a split in the zone in the bottom of the third, as Shohei Ohtani backed away from the pitch. The two-way star’s knees buckled for a moment while the split fell for a called strike. Two pitches later, Ohtani’s helmet flew off as he flailed at another diving split for a strikeout. The Dodgers hadn’t seen Yesavage’s best weapon before. They couldn’t handle it.
Game 5 might have been the final outing of Yesavage’s season, one that pushed much longer than any could’ve hoped or anticipated. He could potentially come out of the bullpen in Game 6 or 7. But if this was Yesavage’s first season finale, it couldn’t have gone any better or been more historic.
The fastest start in World Series history
Three pitches. Two swings. That’s all it took for the Blue Jays to blast their way to a two-run lead. Davis Schneider and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. yanked no-doubt blasts to the left-field seats moments into Wednesday’s contest, forcing Blake Snell to stare down at the mound and wipe dirt off the rubber.
The Jays became the first team in World Series history to achieve back-to-back homers to start a game. They didn’t hit consecutive homers to start a game all regular season. Snell hadn’t let up back-to-back home runs to open a start all year, either. But in a World Series that continues adding lines to the history books, the Jays wrote a few more words.
Your reactions to Game 6
💬 Dean R.: The series isn’t over, but it sure isn’t looking good. The Jays deserve a ton of credit. They take very much the opposite approach of the Dodgers. From an objective standpoint they are more fun to watch as a baseball purist. Funny thing is, I thought the same thing about the Brewers, and the Dodgers just stomped them.
💬 Daniel D.: As a Mets fan, the Toronto Blue Jays remind me a bit of the 2015 KC Royals. Not many big stars, but solid from top to bottom, opportunistic, hustling, good D and solid pitching. Royals wiped the floor with the Mets that year. I’m hoping the Jays will finish the job against the Dodgers.
💬 Brent G.: A-Ball to World Series legend in one season. What a show Trey!
💬 James G.: Yesavage breaks rookie strikeout record that had lasted 75 years. That is quite the achievement.
💬 Michael P.: I think what people are missing is that the Dodgers could have easily prevented all this if they just spent way more money.
Dave Roberts on Betts: ‘I think he’s pressing’
It was another tough night for Mookie Betts.The Dodgers shortstop went 0-for-4 in Game 5. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts didn‘t mince words when talking about Betts’ struggles.
💬 “I think he’s pressing. I think you can see there’s a little anxiousness there.”
Freeman on Yesavage: ‘He had everything working tonight’
Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman was complimentary of Blue Jays pitcher Trey Yesavage and his record-setting performance in Game 5. He admitted that the Dodgers’ offense hasn’t been working in the last two games.
💬: “180 from the first game. He had everything working tonight. Still got to put runs on the board.
💬: “They just played a better game than us tonight.”
Game 5 picks to click
Dodgers C Will Smith ❌
Smith had a quarter of the Dodgers’ hits in Game 5 but, no, he did not have a good game. The only Dodgers who clicked in any way were Teoscar Hernández (two singles) and Kiké Hernández (homer). The Dodgers are slumping, from the future Hall of Famers at the top of the lineup to the platoon bats at the bottom. Shuffling the batting order for Game 5, moving Smith ahead of Mookie Betts, did not solve that.
Blue Jays C Alejandro Kirk ❌
There’s a case to be made for almost everyone in the Jays lineup that they clicked in Game 5. Kirk reached base twice, singling and walking. But we have high standards here at Pick-to-Click HQ. Kirk had a fine performance, but not a remarkable one. I don’t think he’ll particularly mind this red X, as his team is headed home to Toronto with two chances to secure a World Series ring.
Yesavage has message to his family
Trey Yesavage, in his postgame interview on the Fox broadcast, had a message to his parents following his epic Game 5 performance. If you’ve been watching the Sportsnet broadcast in Canada, you’ve seen Yesavage’s parents in the crowd cheering on their son during playoff games.
💬: “Safe travels back to Pennsylvania, and I’ll see them on Friday.”
MVP: Trey Yesavage
Those early home runs were awesome, and eight of the nine Blue Jays starters had a hit, but the kid on the mound was unbelievable.
This was Trey Yesavage’s eighth big league start, five of them have been in the playoffs, and this one might have been even better than his postseason debut against the Dodgers. He got 23 swing and misses, most of those on a slider that made some accomplished hitters look completely overmatched.
Yesavage broke Smoky Joe Wood’s record for the most World Series strikeouts by a pitcher 22 or younger, and he became the first pitcher of any age to strike out 12 batters in a World Series game since Orlando Hernández in 2000.
That’s a quarter century since anyone had been this dominant in a Fall Classic. Incredible.
LVP: Top of the Dodgers lineup
Can’t pin this one on a single hitter. Mookie Betts was 0-for-4. Freddie Freeman struck out three times. The top four Dodgers hitters — Shohei Ohtani, Will Smith, Betts and Freeman — combined to go 1-for-15 with eight strikeouts.
Behind them, Teoscar Hernández had a couple of hits but he also misplayed a ball in right field, which cost the Dodgers a run.
Just a rough night for the Dodgers stars, and now they’re a loss away from watching the Blue Jays celebrate.
Reviewing our Blue Jays keys to victory
Trust in the splitter ✅ Unable to command his splitter in Game 1, Trey Yesavage was a rookie without his primary weapon against the Dodgers lineup. Back on the mound in Game 5, he established the splitter early and showed he could throw it for strikes. He had everything working from the jump — fastball, slider, splitter — and he dotted so many pitches that the Dodgers started to chase those that weren’t. Yesavage got 23 whiffs. The Dodgers swung and missed at seven of the 10 splitters they offered at.
Make Snell work ✅ They made him work all right, but not in the way I had imagined. Rather than battle Blake Snell in deep counts, they were aggressive out of the gate. Snell started the game with three fastballs, and two of them were deposited beyond the left-field wall. He had to change his game plan entirely, leading with off-speed stuff and pitching backward to bring the heater back into play. Snell sailed after a while, enough that manger Dave Roberts permitted him to return to the mound for the seventh inning and throw 116 pitches. But once again, the Blue Jays outlasted the Dodgers ace.
Make every scoring chance count ✅ The Blue Jays continue to score in bunches, whether that’s the first two swings of the game or another late rally to chase an elite Dodgers starter. With Snell on a short leash in the seventh, Addison Barger led off with a single and Andrés Giménez walked. Even as Snell secured the second out of the inning before exiting, it felt inevitable that the Blue Jays would cash in once the Dodgers bullpen door opened. They did. Edgardo Henriquez threw one to the backstop, then Bo Bichette sliced a single to right field, and what had been a nail-biter turned into a four-run lead. Insurmountable, given how cold the Dodgers bats have gone. The Jays added an insurance run in the eighth.
Reviewing our Dodgers keys to victory
A better Blake Snell ❌ Honestly, the big red X is a bit harsh, but the pitching line is what it is. This wasn’t the Snell who had dominated for a month-plus leading into the World Series. That said, Snell was better than in Game 1. He made two costly mistakes within his first three pitches, but the next Blue Jays run scored after a misplayed ball in right field, and the next two came when Dave Roberts tried to push Snell through the seventh because there were no better options in the bullpen. What the Dodgers needed was for Snell to be as good as Trey Yesavage, and that was an awfully hard standard to meet.
Outhit the Blue Jays ❌ Maybe this had more to do with Yesavage and less to do with the Dodgers, but they had only four hits tonight. No team was going to do much against Yesavage, but this has been an issue throughout the World Series. The Dodgers have hit for decent power — they hit another home run tonight — but they just haven’t consistently built innings. And they certainly didn’t build any tonight.
Get Mookie going ❌ Dave Roberts finally pulled him for the No. 2 spot in the lineup, but Mookie Betts was hitless again. He went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts. He has a .657 OPS in the playoffs and a .361 OPS in the World Series. It doesn’t help that he’s one of four Dodgers regulars hitting below .200 this series.
Runs scored in series
Through five games, here is a comparison of the runs scored in the World Series. Toronto has an 11-run edge compared to Los Angeles, one of the reasons why the Blue Jays lead the World Series 3-2:
- Blue Jays: 29
- Dodgers: 18
Moment that mattered: Yesavage doesn’t blink
If this game was going to get away from Trey Yesavage, it was going to happen in the third inning when he made his only costly mistake of the night.
He’d struck out five in a row before Kiké Hernández hit a solo home run. It was a one-run game at that point, and the top of the Dodgers’ order was just around the corner. Yesavage was going to start facing hitters for a second time.
How did he respond? He got Alex Call to line out to center, then started his second turn through the order by striking out Shohei Ohtani flailing at a splitter.
Yesavage ultimately struck out five his second time through the order. He wasn’t in trouble. He was in complete control.
Moment that mattered: Blue Jays come out swinging
Was this game over after three pitches? It might have been. Blue Jays leadoff hitter Davis Schneider — in that spot only because George Springer is hurt — homered on Blake Snell’s first pitch of the game.
Two pitches later, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. also went deep. It was the first time in World Series history that a team opened a game with back-to-back homers.
Snell wasn’t bad the rest of the way, but a misplayed ball in right field led to another run, and the Blue Jays tacked on late. Given the way Trey Yesavage was pitching, the Blue Jays only need two runs — and they got them with their first two batters.
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