Trey Yesavage has been a Blue Jay, a Canadian, a Fisher Cat, a Bison and … back to a Blue Jay. He’s pitched in Dunedin, Fla.; Vancouver, British Columbia; Manchester, N.H.; Buffalo, N.Y. and Toronto. All in the past six months.
As a novel, his 2025 season could come with a Kafka and Kerouac coauthorship — a metamorphosis on the road.
And now he has reached a new destination: Yesavage will face the Mariners as the starter for Game 2 of the American League Championship Series on Monday.
“It’s a great feeling,” Yesavage said on Sunday. “Being able to go out there and play for this team is special. The clubhouse is rallied behind me, and I have all the confidence in the world.”
Yesavage’s path through all four full-season levels of the Minor Leagues completed with a move to the Majors isn’t unprecedented; nine other players have hit Single-A, High-A, Double-A and Triple-A in the same year as their MLB debut since 2005. But it is rare, and to cap that off with a Toronto postseason-record 11 strikeouts over 5 1/3 no-hit innings against the Yankees in Game 2 of the ALDS at Rogers Centre, that’s where this storybook journey feels unprecedented.
“Along the way, every pitching coach had an amazing mentality, knew how to help me where I needed help but not, like, reshape who I am as a pitcher,” Yesavage said. “All the support staff, as in strength coaches, nutritionists, trainers, across this organization, they’re all phenomenal, and I give everybody in this organization a lot of credit.”
To better understand how the 2024 20th overall pick moved across the map and up prospect rankings in his first full season, MLB Pipeline spoke to notable witnesses of his time at each Minor League level:
7 G, 7 GS, 33 1/3 IP, 2.43 ERA, 0.81 WHIP, 8 BB, 55 K, 43.3 K%, .161 AVG
In deciding where they’d send their first-rounder for his first dose of the pros after college, the Blue Jays had to factor in the cold-weather environments of High-A Vancouver and Double-A New Hampshire in early April and how that could affect an arm the organization wanted to keep healthy and productive all the way through to the fall.
Yesavage stumbled out of the blocks, walking six over 3 2/3 innings in his first Florida State League start on April 8, but found his footing quickly with consecutive 10-strikeout outings on April 19 and April 25.
Entering his May 13 start against Pirates affiliate Bradenton, he ranked second in the FSL with 43 punchouts in only 28 1/3 innings. The 6-foot-4 right-hander’s unique nature was proving too difficult for Single-A batters to pick up with his supremely high release point, over-the-top delivery and armside-heavy arsenal consisting of a 93-96 mph fastball with lots of ride, an upper-80s slider and a 83-85 mph splitter.
“We had machines set up at a pretty, pretty good height,” Griffin said of Bradenton’s prep, “and then we used foam balls that came with extra spin so it was riding at the top of the zone. We tried to emulate his fastball as much as we could off that machine.”
Griffin, who went on to play at three levels himself and earned MiLB Hitting Prospect of the Year honors after finishing with 21 homers and 65 steals, led off that Tuesday night at Dunedin’s TD Ballpark to give the game (attended by 494) an immediate first-round matchup. Yesavage threw him a 94.5 mph fastball at the belt, and the right-handed slugger sent it at 103.6 mph beyond the left-field bullpen.
“I was geared up to be aggressive to the heater because I figured he’d come out trying to blow by us,” he said.
But like any top-quality encounter, Yesavage didn’t wait long to get his revenge. The hurler threw three straight sliders in their next meeting to lead off the third — each one down and away from Griffin, the last two going for whiffs.
Yesavage struck out Griffin again in the fifth on five pitches — the last of which was a bounced slider after two straight 95 mph heaters.
“All his pitches look the same out of the hand,” Griffin said. “That’s what makes him so tough. The slider looks like it’s going to be down the middle, you go to swing and then it’s in the dirt. He did a great job of making me miss, and then he kept going to it until I made an adjustment. It was a fun battle.”
Griffin’s second strikeout was Yesavage’s 12th of the night — a number that remains his career high. It was also his final batter in the FSL.
As an epilogue to that, Griffin and Yesavage almost crossed paths again at the All-Star Futures Game at Atlanta’s Truist Park two months later. The Jays pitcher faced only one batter in the showcase, striking out Cardinals top prospect JJ Wetherholt on the slider, before confusion from the American League side about the pitching order led him to being pulled.
Griffin was in the on-deck circle.
“I’m not going to say I was too excited to get in the box, but I was ready,” he said. “When he came out of the game, it was definitely a sigh of relief.”
4 G, 4 GS, 17 1/3 IP, 1.56 ERA, 0.92 WHIP, 11 BB, 33 K, 47.8 K%, .086 AVG
Overall: 11 G, 11 GS, 50 2/3 IP, 2.13 ERA, 0.85 WHIP, 19 BB, 88 K, 44.9 K%, .136 AVG
Through his seven starts with Dunedin, Yesavage piggybacked with fellow right-hander and 2022 19th-rounder Gage Stanifer. When Yesavage was moved to the Northwest League in mid-May, Stanifer was right there alongside, flying to Vancouver just in time to take another long bus ride to Eugene, Ore. for their respective High-A debuts on May 20.
The standout memory in Stanifer’s mind from that time together with Vancouver came in a May 31 home game at Nat Bailey Stadium, a Saturday matinee with 4,725 in attendance. It was the pair’s first combined outing north of the border.
“That’s your first introduction to the culture of baseball in Canada,” Stanifer said. “You see how deep the fanbase runs, being all the way on the other coast. There is Blue Jays gear, and Blue Jays fans are showing up to sell out a crowd. It was just really special and really cool.”
Riding that atmosphere, Yesavage tossed 4 1/3 no-hit innings against Hillsboro, and Stanifer kept the gem going with four scoreless frames of his own, fanning seven, with righty Bo Bonds getting a pair of outs between them. It was Vancouver’s only 1-0 win of the season.
By coming in behind Yesavage for his first 11 appearances of 2025, Stanifer got a front-row seat to the East Carolina product’s dominance and played off it with his own 94-96 mph fastball and 83-86 mph slider from a lower slot than Yesavage’s.
“It was a little different of a perspective for me at the beginning of the year, coming out of the ‘pen for the first time,” Stanifer said. “But I’d also started to develop a splitter last season, and then having him come in and just kind of give me a few pointers – whether it had been his thoughts on release point or grip pressure or whatever it might have been – helped me find a feel for my splitter and be a little more comfortable.”
Now ranked as Toronto’s No. 6 prospect, Stanifer, who transitioned back to the rotation when Yesavage was promoted in mid-June, finished with a 2.86 ERA over 110 innings at three levels in a breakout campaign. His 161 strikeouts ranked sixth in all of the Minors; Yesavage finished seventh with 160.
8 G, 7 GS, 30 IP, 4.50 ERA, 1.07 WHIP, 11 BB, 46 K, 38.0 K%, .191 AVG
Overall: 19 G, 18 GS, 80 2/3 IP, 3.01 ERA, 0.93 WHIP, 30 BB, 134 K, 42.3 K%, .157 AVG
A big part of New Hampshire pitching coach Austin Bibens-Dirkx wanted Yesavage to break camp with him back in the spring, but the former Rangers reliever knew to wait his turn.
“The biggest thing is trying not to screw him up, honestly,” Bibens-Dirkx said.
Yesavage walked four in four innings in his Double-A bow on June 12 in Reading (near his Pennsylvania hometown) but only allowed one earned run and one hit. It was a humbling as the ace jumped to the upper Minors for the first time.
“I think he had kind of an awakening,” Bibens-Dirkx said. “‘OK, I was just able to throw my split down in the dirt and they were going to swing at it. I was able to throw my heater middle if I was behind because it’s funky, it has good vert, it’s pretty deceptive.’ But guys were more on top of it, and he had to make some of those adjustments when execution became a more important key for him.”
There were minor physical tweaks Bibens-Dirkx and the Fisher Cats made with Yesavage, including some involving rear-foot stability, and the pitching coach credited a 20-day gap between starts in July for the Futures Game and All-Star break with settling the prospect.
Yesavage made three appearances for New Hampshire after that pause and didn’t walk a single batter in any of them, while fanning 23 of his 47 batters faced.
“I think he realized that when he’s out of the zone, like we saw almost every first game that he had in every level, he’s not as good as he can be,” Bibens-Dirkx said. “When he is [in the zone], his stuff is electric and unique.”
6 G, 4 GS, 17 1/3 IP, 3.63 ERA, 1.15 WHIP, 11 BB, 26 K, 36.1 K%, .148 AVG
Overall: 25 G, 22 GS, 98 IP, 3.12 ERA, 0.97 WHIP, 41 BB, 160 K, 41.1 K%, .156 AVG
Acquired from the Padres in a Trade Deadline swap for Will Wagner, Brandon Valenzuela arrived in the Blue Jays system in August with a strong reputation as a defensive catcher and little knowledge of the pitching in the Toronto system.
So when Yesavage was promoted to Buffalo officially on Aug. 12 (two days before his Triple-A debut), Valenzuela was quick to get a baptism by fire on that unique arsenal, particularly its armside nature.
“I remember in a warmup, he threw me one of the softer pitches, and I didn’t see it so it hit the backside behind me,” he said. “I’m like, ‘The hell?’ When you have been catching a lot and you hear a slider, you expect it to click into a certain shape.”
Yesavage once again had to grow into the level alongside Valenzuela, having walked four in 1 2/3 innings in that first Bisons outing on Aug. 14. On Aug. 27, the pair were back together for a game in Indianapolis, where Yesavage’s pitches may as well have been coming from atop skyscrapers beyond the batter’s eye.
“It was really, really bright, and I told him, ‘Bro, I don’t see the ball well, and I’m the one catching it,’” Valenzuela said. “We’re just going to keep spamming and spamming splitters because they couldn’t see it either.”
Sure enough, Indians batters swung at eight splitters and missed on five of them for a whiff rate of 62.5 percent. He allowed only one earned run and fanned five over 4 2/3 innings.
Yesavage’s next two outings came out of the bullpen as the Blue Jays flirted with using him in a relief role, but they moved him back to the rotation on Sept. 10 at Rochester; he retired all nine Red Wings he faced and struck out four.
“It was basically like we were throwing a bullpen without hitters,” Valenzuela said.
Five days later, he was a big leaguer.
“He’s one of those guys that doesn’t quit,” Valenzuela said. “He’s not afraid of anybody, as you’ve seen in the playoffs. He’s just going after the guys. No matter what happens, he’s ready to throw the next pitch.”
