Blue Jays' slow build up plan for Yesavage isn't a new idea for this front office

Trey Yesavage has yet to appear in a Grapefruit League game during Spring Training. The Toronto Blue Jays right hander is slowly being built up for the regular season and it appears he won't start a game over the next week either. According to Arden Zwelling of Sportsnet, the Blue Jays plan for their starters are Dylan Cease, Eric Lauer, Cody Ponce, and Max Scherzer from Tuesday through Saturday.

Now, that doesn't mean he can't come in during the middle of one of those games, but the point is, the Blue Jays want to take it slow with Yesavage after his unprecedented rise to the majors last season, which was a complete aversion to the Blue Jays' normal plans for their pitching prospects.

In fact, the way they are building up Yesavage is more of the norm for this Toronto front office.

Blue Jays recreating their minor league plan with Yesavage at the majors

After making his major league debut last year in September, it marked some uncharted territory for this Blue Jays front office. Ever since Mark Shapiro and Ross Atkins started running things in the winter of 2015, their process for bringing young talent up to the big leagues has been a slow process. Many fans will remember the backlash the front office faced when they deliberately manipulated Bo Bichette and Vladimir Guerrero Jr.'s service time when they were going from prospects to big leaguers.

But for Yesavage, he went from being drafted in July of 2024 to making his big league debut in 2025. The only other pitcher that came close to getting to the big leagues that fast was Alek Manoah. Manoah was drafted in July of 2019 and he made his big league debut on May 27, 2021. Part of that is the fact that the Blue Jays haven't had a great track record of drafting successful pitchers over the last 11 years. The other part is that they try to take their time and build up those pitchers to be able to handle a full season's workload at the MLB level.

The plan for Yesavge looks to be a slow build where he may come in and only go three or four innings to start the season. Putting a cap on him was exactly what the Blue Jays did all of last season as he began his pro-baseball career. In fact, Yesavage didn't throw more than six innings in a game until October 29, when he pitched seven innings of three hit ball, while striking out 12 LA Dodgers hitters in Game 5 of the World Series.

Prior to that, he threw six innings a game just once, and that was way back on May 1 when he was pitching in the Florida State League with the Dunedin Blue Jays. Every time he moved up a level, he would be limited to a couple of innings each outing, and never topping five at any of those levels. Between the minors and the majors and the postseason Yesavage pitched 139.2 innings in 2025.

For any 22-year-old, that's a big work load. For a pitcher that only threw 93.1 innings in a single season before that, it's a giant leap. Especially when almost 30 of those innings were during the high pressure, intense scenario of the MLB postseason. The biggest thing for the Blue Jays is that they have afforded themselves the ability to let Yesavage come along at a slower pace. They have guys like Lauer and Ponce, who could be in swing-man roles and could piggy back off a short start by Yesavage in the early parts of the season.

Yesavage showed last year why he was suc a highly touted prospect and he had tremendous success so early in his career and the Blue Jays are doing everything they can to preserve that success for the long term.