Blue Jays' top pitching prospect dominates with Dunedin

Toronto Blue Jays No. 2 prospect, Yesavage earned his first professional win on May 1 vs. Clearwater, tossing six shutout innings with eight strikeouts, no walks, and just four hits allowed.

The 2024 first-round pick struck out six of the first eight batters he faced in the outing.

Through his first five professional starts, Yesavage owns a 2.31 ERA over 23.1 innings with 36 strikeouts and a 0.90 WHIP. He has struck out 28 batters in his last 15.2 innings.

The 21-year-old ranks among Florida State League leaders in ERA (10th), strikeouts (T-2nd), innings pitched (8th), opponent average (.163, 3rd), and WHIP (3rd).

Yesavage is the second Dunedin pitcher to earn weekly honors this season, joining LHP Javen Coleman (April 8-13).

With a promotion to advanced-A Vancouver on the horizon, Yesavage is demonstrating why the Blue Jays thought so highly of him. Through five outings at low-A Dunedin so far, he's struck out 36 batters over 23.1 innings, allowing eight runs, six earned, on 13 hits and eight walks.

More tellingly, he's gotten whiffs on 70 of the 174 swings taken against him, or 40 per cent, and it's three different pitches generating all those misses - a four-seam fastball sitting about 94 m.p.h., a changeup and a cutter that have alternated serving as his primary weapon. The whiff-rate on his changeup is a stupefying 61 per cent.

All of which is why GM Ross Atkins said Friday the Blue Jays «are confident that he is someone that could move quickly,» after explaining that a desire to get Yesavage consistent work and to avoid the rainouts and cold weather inherent to Aprils in Vancouver «was a factor» in initially assigning him to Dunedin.

Wherever he makes his next start, a steady buildup of Yesavage's workload will be among his developmental priorities for the Blue Jays, as he logged 93.1 innings for the East Carolina Pirates last year and was shut down after a few side sessions once he signed.

The goal, obviously, is to get him through an entire professional season while acclimating him to the physical demands and higher level of competition.

From spring training onwards, he noticed a difference «in the structure of the bullpens, building stamina in the arm along with like fine-tuning all my pitches,» while doing «conditioning every day, which I never did in college» after an initial five weeks in the fall.

The Blue Jays open a six-game road series against the Fort Myers Mighty Mussels on Tuesday at 7:05 p.m. at Hammond Stadium.