Trey Yesavage’s devastating splitter turned heads in defeating the New York Yankees within the American League Division Sequence and the Blue Jays’ rookie pitcher will possible be Toronto’s starter once they host Recreation 2 of the AL Championship Sequence on Monday.
However why is his splitter so good? In spite of everything, many present Main League Baseball pitchers — together with teammate Kevin Gausman — have a splitter of their arsenal, and the pitch has been round for many years.
“I feel the truth that he has a excessive launch level on his excessive arm,” mentioned Blue Jays legend Pat Hentgen, who’s now a particular assistant in Toronto’s pitching division. “It jogs my memory a bit little bit of Juan Guzman, a man I performed with, who had the next arm than most guys got here up with, like a gyro slider that actually went straight down, and the league thought he had damaged his finger, however it was really his ball.
“I feel it was due to his excessive launch level and Trey has this distinctive excessive launch level.”
A fastball is precisely what it seems like: a ball thrown with as a lot power as a pitcher can muster, with the intention of getting previous the hitter however remaining within the strike zone. The most typical fastball in right now’s sport is the four-seam fastball, with the pitcher’s fingers holding 4 spots on the ball.
Splitters are thrown with the hassle of a fastball, however due to the way in which they’re gripped by the pitcher – sometimes utilizing two fingers to type a V on all sides of the ball – they may land sharply as they strategy house plate. As a result of they’ve the identical pitching movement as a fastball however are slower with extra downward motion, a fastball and splitter are utilized in conjunction to maintain hitters guessing.
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What makes Yesavage’s supply distinctive in MLB is that the arm place is at 12 o’clock. In different phrases, when he’s throwing the fastball or the splitter, he throws the ball immediately above his head, whereas each different pitcher in baseball has some sort of angle to their arm once they throw.
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“He’s able to throwing two pitches on the identical excessive launch level,” mentioned Hentgen, who gained the Cy Younger Award with the Blue Jays because the American League’s greatest pitcher in 1996. “One is 95 mph and the opposite is 85 mph and it’s only a very troublesome recipe for a hitter.”
Even Yesavage’s teammates cannot inform the distinction when the ball leaves his hand for the primary time.
“I feel it appears precisely like a fastball,” Blue Jays infielder Andres Gimenez mentioned Monday. “I used to be at shortstop proper behind him and thought, ‘It appears precisely the identical – the fastball and the break up.’ After which the slider (too).
“Clearly an electrical fastball, however the break up is de facto good. I feel it appears the identical.”
Yesavage, 22, started his season with the single-A Dunedin Blue Jays of the Florida Complicated League and went via each stage of Toronto’s full-season minor league system, reaching the massive leagues as a September call-up.
Yesavage has one win in his three common season begins for the Blue Jays, with a 3.21 earned run common and 16 strikeouts in 14 innings of labor. He made his postseason debut on October 5, placing out 11 Yankees in 5 1/3 innings of hitless baseball as Toronto beat New York 13–7.
Though Yesavage’s MLB information set is comparatively small, up to now he has thrown his fastball 45.2% of the time, a slider (a ball that strikes horizontally) 28.5% and his splitter 26.4%. The sport-changer is clearly his outdoors pitching, because it resulted in 10 of his 16 regular-season strikeouts.
“It is a swing-and-miss pitch. I am simply attempting to get the hitter to go over it,” Yesavage mentioned. “It is available in the identical means as my fastball, however it’s slower and falls simply earlier than it hits the strike zone.
“Nearly fell off the desk, as you possibly can see.”
Hentgen, who was a member of the Blue Jays groups that gained the World Sequence in 1992 and 1993, thinks it is extra than simply the dramatic vertical break of Yesavage’s splitter that makes it efficient. He believes it is the mix of the rookie’s splitter at the side of his more and more correct fastball.
“His splitter is de facto good. It is constant. And once I say constant, it is not a lot the pace and motion, it is a launch level,” Hentgen mentioned. “The one factor I seen all year long with him is that his fastball command obtained higher and higher with every problem, with every stage, and that is what actually separates him now from a yr in the past once I first noticed him pitch, after we first caught him.
—With information from Gregory Sturdy in New York Metropolis.
This report by The Canadian Press was first printed Oct. 10, 2025.
© 2025 The Canadian Press
