Blue Jays: Breaking down Trey Yesavage’s historic debut

It was a truly captivating beginning to his MLB career, one that leaves Blue Jays fans dreaming of what’s to come. For now, however, we’re left with breaking down just how elite Yesavage’s stuff looked last night, so without further blabbering, let’s dive in.

4-Seam Fastball:  

Yesavage’s fastball averaged 94.6 MPH with 20″ of IVB and -6.1 VAA. Right off the bat, that’s a 70-grade fastball on the 20-80 scouting scale.

You can count on one hand the number of starters in baseball who average that amount of IVB on their fastball. For those unfamiliar, IVB = induced vertical break, which is a measure of a pitch’s vertical movement, excluding gravity’s influence. A positive IVB indicates upward movement or “ride” on the pitch, while a negative IVB indicates downward movement. In terms of stuff+, it grades out in the 110-120 range depending on whose model you use. Simply put, it’s an elite offering, and it’s no surprise that Rays hitters whiffed on 30.8% with the pitch.

There may not have been a more prudent example of how effective the pitch is than the results it got against Junior Caminero, who, on the year, is slugging .578 on fastballs and produced a +15 run value on the pitch, whiffed on three Yesavage fastballs and didn’t put a singular one in play.

Splitter: 

Let me preface this by saying the usual one-start sample size caveats still apply here, and I wouldn’t draw any sweeping conclusions simply based on this outing, but my goodness. If this outing was any indicator of what’s to come, then Trey Yesavage has a genuine 80-grade splitter.

Rays hitters did not have a *shot* at hitting this offering all night. In particular, Brandon Lowe was in purgatory all night and likely put his head on the pillow later that evening and had nightmares about this pitch. Of the 14 swings the Rays took on Yesavage’s splitter, 11 of them ended up as whiffs. That’s a 78.6% whiff rate. Genuinely MLB The Show on Rookie mode level of dominance. And if the Rays did manage to make contact on the split and put it in play (which happened a grand total of one time), it resulted in a 64.6 MPH groundout.

The key to making this pitch so damn unhittable for Trey was the masterful job he did of tunnelling the pitch off of his fastball. This sequence with Jake Mangum in particular was a work of art. He sets him up with a first-pitch fastball on the outside black, and then executes two perfect splitters right on top of it. Between the first fastball and the last splitter in that sequence, he generated 28 inches of separation.

Utter dominance. Before we move on to the slider, please enjoy this clip of Brandon Lowe being in absolute hell.

Slider: 

The slider may be the most unique pitch profile in Yesavage’s arsenal.

Due to his arm slot, his slider doesn’t have the typical traits of the offering. It’s more of a north-south pitch than an east-west pitch, as evidenced by the negative IVB he induces on the pitch. Some sliders out of the hand will look like changeups to the untrained eye. Nevertheless, it’s still a very good offering for Yesavage, and it produced a hellacious 44.4% whiff rate against the Rays. Of his three pitches, the slider was the pitch that was least in the strike zone, which is by design. In two-strike counts, Yesavage turned to his slider the most to finish off at-bats, as evidenced by his 60% PutAway%, which was the highest mark of all his pitches.

There’s really no superlatives worthy enough to describe what we witnessed last night, not just Blue Jays fans, but the baseball world in general.

Trey Yesavage stepped on that mound at George M. Steinbrenner Field and validated all the wildest beliefs and dreams people have bestowed on him since the day he was drafted, which just so happens to be just barely over a year ago.

It remains to be seen what comes next for Yesavage, although if I were a betting man, I’d bet we see him toe the slab at Kauffman Stadium this Sunday afternoon. Regardless, the young right-hander did nothing to temper the lofty expectations thrown upon him by a juiced-up fanbase; if anything, he only added fuel to what’s become a raging inferno for the Blue Jays.