Wednesday night in Los Angeles, it was finally the Blue Jays’ turn to benefit from a historic performance. They’d lost Game 2 of this World Series to an unhittable Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who put together nine innings of dominance the likes of which, by at least one measure, had not been seen in a World Series since before the launch of Sputnik. They’d lost a surreal Game 3 in which Shohei Ohtani socked two dingers and two doubles and reached base nine times in nine plate appearances, which has never happened before and is not likely to ever happen again, unless Ohtani someday does it himself. In their own wins, the Blue Jays had been normal—admirably normal—out there doing normal baseball things, simply put together in the right sequences. That Toronto’s victories did not require anyone sprouting wings was encouraging, and helped to establish a sense that they’d been broadly the better team, even if the wins themselves were somewhat rudely overshadowed.
The performance in Game 5 of rookie Blue Jays starting pitcher Trey Yesavage was not quite an Ohtani-level what the fuck is happening right now type of thing. Yesavage’s 12 strikeouts were the most by a rookie in a World Series game in history. Yesavage, making his second start in this series, his fifth start of the postseason, and pitching on the road in a playoff game for the first time in his career, mowed his way through the Dodgers’ lineup, making several of the game’s biggest stars look overwhelmed and ridiculous along the way. His disgusting splitter, thrown from approximately the tropopause, induced seven swing-and-misses against just one ball in play; his slider, thrown from the same preposterous arm angle, induced a whopping 14 swing-and-misses. Just three of Yesavage’s 104 pitches were hit hard and in play, per Statcast. One of them, launched by Kiké Hernandez into the stands in left in the bottom of the third inning, accounted for Yesavage’s only run allowed in seven innings. Yesavage didn’t even watch the ball fly out of there; two batters later, he used one of those dive-bombing splitters to make the best baseball player in the world look entirely foolish, and finished the inning. The Dodgers never came close to bothering him again.
