Seattle Mariners dugout. Sure, they were in a two-run hole in the third inning of Game 6 in this American League Championship Series, but Cal Raleigh, the likely AL MVP, was coming to the plate and the bases were loaded.
The score was fixing to be flipped with one swing from a man who’s hit 64 home runs through the playoffs. Just one hanging splitter or mislocated fastball or cement-mixer slider from a 22-year-old rookie who was in Class AAA ball a month ago, and the Mariners would be on track for their first trip to the World Series.
Toronto Blue Jays were thinking something entirely different: Trey Yesavage, with all of six major league starts behind him, is no ordinary newcomer.
“When he has the ball,” Max Scherzer, the 41-year-old future Hall of Fame right-hander tells USA TODAY Sports, “we all believe in him.”
And so Yesavage threw just one split-finger fastball to the MVP, and Raleigh scorched a 100-mph worm burner right to Vladimir Guerrero Jr., beginning a fundamentally gorgeous 3-6-1 double play that finished with Yesavage blindly finding the bag with his right foot.
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It ended the threat and began an almost absurd sequence of three double-play grounders in three innings, guiding the Blue Jays toward a 6-2 victory that squared this series 3-3 and set the stage for the most pulsating delight in the sport.
desultory Game 5 defeat to keep their season alive.
Give some flowers to Guerrero and Addison Barger for their home runs and Barger’s three RBIs, and closer Jeff Hoffman for his two near-perfect innings of relief.
historic) and his second one in Game 2 against the Mariners (terrible).
That’s one way to handle the stress, an ability that’s jumped out to his far more veteran teammates since the Blue Jays recalled him in September, hoping to workshop an October weapon out of a guy who ascended A, AA and AAA ball in just a few months.
“That’s what strikes you right away when you meet him: He’s very levelheaded, very calm,” says Hoffman. “He’s got a great presence about him and the fact he holds it in big games like this is a really good sign, a really cool thing for the Blue Jays for the future.
“You can see the makeup. And he’s got what it takes, and he’s got a great group of guys around him to help him any way we can moving forward.”
Yesavage’s work, finally, is done for the year. Every member of the Blue Jays pitching staff expects to be available for Game 7 except Yesavage, who can simply watch and learn, and marvel at this amazing opportunity to win a championship ring before he’s even spent a month in the big leagues.
At the same time: He’s the reason they’re still alive.
Says Guerrero: “I’m very proud of him: 22 years old, young, hungry and you can tell he goes out and does everything he can to win the game.”
