After a pair of blowout wins in each of the first two games of the ALDS, the Toronto Blue Jays take to the road up 2-0 over the New York Yankees, and are now just one win away from advancing to the ALCS for the first time in nine years.
In the Game 2 victory on Sunday, manager John Schneider entrusted rookie right-handed pitcher Trey Yesavage with the ball, setting the stage for a historic postseason performance from the 22-year-old hurler.
Yesavage, coming into the game with just 14.0 innings pitched at the big league level, stymied a potent Yankees’ offence with a franchise postseason record 11 strikeouts over 5 2/3 innings of no-hit ball.
After retiring Yankees catcher Austin Wells to begin the top of the sixth, Schneider emerged from the home dugout to make a call to the bullpen, ending Yesavage’s day at just 78 pitches before the fans in attendance rewarded him with a lengthy standing ovation.
The Yankees offence would come alive in the middle innings against Toronto’s lower-leverage arms, but the Blue Jays would eventually pull out a 13-7 victory to stay perfect in the 2025 postseason.
ESPN’s Buster Olney joined TSN 1050’s First Up on Monday morning to discuss Yesavage’s dominant postseason debut, and how his early departure in Game 2 could play in the Blue Jays’ favour later on in the series.
“I thought [Schneider] made the right decision,” he said. “I had no problem with it. You know that he’s not actually going to have an opportunity to throw a no-hitter. You’re not going to let the guy throw 120, 130 pitches as John said after the game.
“Here’s the other thing, we have this Game 4 question coming up and the fact that you’re talking about saving bullets, potentially for that game. Saving ammunition for that game where maybe he’s able to come out of the bullpen, and especially you want that option because you just saw how befuddled the Yankees were against that splitter.”
The Blue Jays named just three starters to their 26-man ALDS roster, with Shane Bieber set to pitch in Game 3. Kevin Gausman, the team’s Game 1 starter, is tentatively lined up to pitch in a potential deciding Game 5, opening the door for Yesavage to come on in relief for Game 4.
“After the game, the Yankee players spoke very highly of Yesavage’s performance,” Olney added. “But there’s also such an advantage when you haven’t seen somebody before, and you don’t really have a sense of a gameplan… Yesavage was a complete mystery to them, there’s no question about it."
While the rookie’s performance stole most of the headlines following Game 2, arguably the biggest moment of the contest belonged to Toronto’s homegrown superstar, Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
After the bottom of the Blue Jays’ order knocked Yankees ace Max Fried out of the game in the fourth inning, Guerrero stepped up to the plate with the bases loaded and smacked a fastball deep to left field for a grand slam, the first in the franchise’s postseason history.
Guerrero, who inked a 14-year, $500 million extension with the team this past April, has been red-hot to begin the postseason, going six-for-nine at the plate with two home runs, six RBI and a 1.933 OPS across the first two games.
The Montreal-born slugger struggled mightily to end the regular season, hitting just .164 over his final 57 plate appearances. Prior to Game 1, he had scrapped together just three extra-base hits since Sept. 5, while also failing to hit any home runs.
The five days off between the end of the regular season and the beginning of the ALDS seems to have allowed Guerrero to make the necessary adjustments at the plate, and has looked every bit of the $500 million man he was signed to be.
“The Jays offence, as we talked about in the past, is incredibly underrated because they put the ball in play, they don’t strike out much and Vladdy is such an important part of that. But that’s [been] the one missing thing, power, and in particular, power from him.
“We’ve talked about in the past about how, Vladdy, at heart, is a great bright-lights player. He’s so comfortable playing on the big stage, and so for him to launch himself as he did in these first two days, that is huge.
“If the Blue Jays are going to make a deep dive into this postseason, Vladdy has got to be a guy who leads that.”
