We'll get to the "LOL Yankees" portion of the night later, but first: This postseason is for the rookie pitchers. After Cam Schlittler put on a show against the Red Sox, the New York Yankees got a taste of their own medicine on Sunday night when they faced Trey Yesavage, a 22-year-old who, in his fourth-ever career start, managed to outduel Max Fried.
Yesavage started the year in Single-A, where he made seven appearances before getting promoted to High-A, where he made four appearances before getting promoted to Double-A, where he made eight appearances and celebrated his 22nd birthday before getting promoted to Triple-A, where he made six appearances before getting promoted to the Majors, where he made three appearances before becoming Toronto's Game 2 starter in the AL Divisional Series. Busy year.
It's bold, but not a bad strategy. Even with fewer intra-division games to work with, divisional rivals grow accustomed to each other's starters and their pitches. Why not make an opponent's offense adjust to a totally new guy, especially if you have the worst starting rotation of all playoff teams? It helps that Yesavage is, to be complimentary, a bit of a freak. He has one of the steepest arm angles in baseball, at 63 degrees—that, combined with being 6-foot-4, also gives Yesavage one of the highest release points. His outlier of a delivery helps him on all of his pitches, but especially his splitter, which comes "from the sky" and "is gross."
The Yankees batters will surely agree that Yesavage's splitter comes "from the sky" and "is gross." In his playoff debut with his parents in attendance, Yesavage threw a no-hitter through 5.1 innings and struck out 11 Yankees. Eight of those 11 strikeouts came on his splitter. He's also a bit of a freak in the other way: After Trent Grisham called a timeout with the count 1-2, Yesavage stayed set, glove covering half his face, the entire time it took for Grisham to get back into the batter's box. Then he immediately struck Grisham out on a splitter.
When Yesavage left the game to a standing ovation in the top of the sixth, the Yankees were hitless and the Blue Jays had scored 12 runs. And here, we get to the "LOL Yankees" portion of the night. Despite having their ace on the mound, the Yankees were not able to avoid giving up 10 runs—or more!—to the Blue Jays for the second consecutive game. The biggest damage came in the fourth inning, when Fried was pulled for fellow starter Will Warren in a Dave Roberts–style maneuver.
This did not pan out. With one out and the bases loaded, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. demolished a 96 mph fastball on the inside of the plate for the first postseason grand slam ever by a Blue Jay, and pimped it beautifully. (For his crimes, Warren became somewhat of an innings scapegoat to help salvage the Yankees' bullpen arms.)
In the immediate aftermath of Yesavage getting pulled with a no-hit bid, the radio commentary was very reasonable—the Blue Jays wanted to manage his arm, and despite only being at 78 pitches, Yesavage had yet to throw more than five innings in any start this year. With a 12-run lead to work with, the Blue Jays could theoretically do anything they wanted with the bullpen and still turn out fine. The saving grace for the Yankees reputation is that the Blue Jays bullpen quickly ended the no-hit bid, and got unfortunately BABIP'd to hell in the seventh inning. By the time the score reached 13-7, the commentary began to feel awfully tense in spite of the still six-run lead; one began to feel that it wouldn't have hurt to leave Yesavage in for another hitter or two. Then John Schneider quit faffing about and brought in Louis Varland and Seranthony Domínguez to stanch the bleeding.
There are two schools of thought to interpreting this offensive onslaught from the Blue Jays. One is that the Yankees have managed to give up over 10 runs in consecutive games, and reliever Luke Weaver's one-pitch, one-out appearance—his first out recorded of the playoffs—was enough to define his postseason ERA at a meager 135.00. More like the Stankees, am I right? The second is to give far more credit to the Blue Jays offense, who clinched the AL East pennant on the last game of the regular season with a 13-4 shellacking of the Tampa Bay Rays, and now, in spite of a bye week, are picking up exactly where they left off.
I'll give you one guess as to which school of thought David Ortiz subscribes to. "They can bring Jesus back, and they're still going to Cancun. It's over. It's a wrap," Ortiz declared on the postseason desk. Now down 0-2 in the series, the Yankees will attempt to bring back Jesus on Tuesday in the Bronx.
