Blue Jays have plenty riding on Trey Yesavage’s Rookie of the Year push

The Toronto Blue Jays front office has to love what they are seeing so far from 22-year-old starting pitcher Trey Yesavage. After starting the season on the Injured List due to a shoulder impingement, Yesavage has basically picked up where he left off last year since he made his season debut on April 28.

He's seemingly gotten stronger and better with every outing and his latest was argubaly his best of the year. Yesavage went six innings while striking out eight and allowing no runs in a 2-1 win over the New York Yankees. As good as it is too see Yesavage's success on the field, there's a business related reason for hoping Yesavage continues to excel in 2026.

If Yesavage manages to win the American League Rookie of the Year award, the Blue Jays would recieve an extra draft pick in next year's MLB draft. Considering they don't draft until after the supplemental round this year (32nd overall), that could pay huge dividens for the Blue Jays and their future prospects.

This falls under the Prospect Promotion Incentive designed by MLB to try and get more teams to promote younger players at the beginning of the season, instead of holding them back to manipulate their service time. To earn that pick the team's player must be on at least two of the three major preseason Top 100 prospects lists.

They must also be on the team's Opening Day roster and accrued a full year of service time during that season. If they don't win the ROTY award but they do finish top 3 in either the MVP or Cy Young voting, that also counts. Yesavage could be on track to check off several of those boxes.

Yesavage's late start shouldn't take him out of the running for ROTY

Let's start with him actually winning the award. Right now, Yesavage is third in fWAR among rookie pitchers in the entire league, behind Parker Messick of Cleveland (1.4 fWAR) and Nolan McLean of the New York Mets (1.2 fWAR). But Yesavage has managed to build up a 1.2 fWAR in five less starts than those two pitchers. Of course the ROTY award isn't only decided amongst pitchers, and so Yesavage will also have to contend with rookie position players.

In the AL the current stand out rookies include Kevin McGonigle (1.9 fWAR) with the Tigers, Munetaka Murakami (1.7 fWAR) with the White Sox and Chase DeLauter (1.2 fWAR) of the Guardians. Not far behind that top three trio are a couple of other Blue Jays in Kazuma Okamoto and Brandon Valenzuela who both have accrued 0.9 fWAR.

Should all these players stay on this pace, the competition for the ROTY will be fierce. The other race that Yesavage could end up in, although it's much more of a long shot, is the Cy Young award race. Just to finish top three, he'll need to go on a tremendous run, but it's not completely unattainable. Through just five starts his 1.2 fWAR ranks 19 among starting pitchers with at least 20 inning's pitched to this point. That's a lot of guys to leap frog, but at his current pace, Yesavage could do exactly that. Of course fWAR isn't the only thing to factor in, but it is a good measuring stick at this early juncture of the season.

The award is really the biggest hurdle Yesavage would have to clear for the Blue Jays to get that extra draft pick. He's been a Top 100 prospect for the last two seasons according to Baseball America, MLB Pipeline and ESPN. In fact in MLB Pipeline's latest update, Yesavage cracked the top five, being listed as the fifth best overall prospect in baseball right now.

And even though he didn't get into a game until April 28, he was still a part of the Blue Jays 40-man roster on Opening Day, and so that box has also been checked off. Right now it comes down to Yesavage's performance on the field and after what the Blue Jays have experienced so far in 2026, with injuries being the prevailing theme of the year, a fully healthy, competitive campaign from Yesavage may already be a prize in itself.

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