Jays rookie Yesavage’s splitter is his not-so-secret weapon. But why is it so good?

Trey Yesavage’s devastating splitter turned heads as he mowed down the New York Yankees in the American League Division Series and the Blue Jays’ rookie pitcher will likely be Toronto’s starter when it hosts Game 2 of the AL Championship Series on Monday.

But why is his splitter so good? After all, many current Major League Baseball pitchers — including teammate Kevin Gausman — have a splitter in their arsenal, and the pitch has been around for decades.

“I think the fact that he’s got the high release point in the high arm slot,” said Blue Jays legend Pat Hentgen, who’s now a special assistant in Toronto’s pitching department. “It reminds you a little bit of Juan Guzman, a guy that I played with, had a higher arm slot than most guys created, like a gyro slider that literally went straight down, and the league thought he threw a split finger, but it was actually his breaking ball.

“I think it was because of his high release point and Trey’s got that unique high release point.”

A fastball is exactly what it sounds like: a ball thrown as hard as a pitcher can muster with the intention of blowing past the hitter but staying in the strike zone. The most common fastball in today’s game is a four-seamer, with the pitcher’s fingers gripping across four of the ball’s stitches.

Splitters are thrown with the effort of a fastball but because of how they’re gripped by the pitcher — typically using two fingers to form a V on either side of the ball — they will drop sharply as they near home plate. Because they have the same throwing motion as a fastball but are slower with more downward motion, a fastball and a splitter are used in tandem to keep batters guessing.

What makes Yesavage’s delivery unique in MLB is that his arm slot is at 12 o’clock. In other words, when he’s pitching either the fastball or the splitter he releases the ball from directly over his head, whereas every other pitcher in baseball has some kind of angle to his arm when he throws.

“He’s able to tunnel two pitches off that same high release point,” said Hentgen, who won a Cy Young Award with the Blue Jays as the American League’s best pitcher in 1996. “One’s 95 m.p.h. and the other one is 85 m.p.h. and it’s just a very tough, tough recipe for a hitter.”

Even Yesavage’s teammates can’t tell the difference when the ball first leaves his hand.

“I think it just looks exactly like a fastball,” said Blue Jays infielder Andres Gimenez on Monday. “I was at shortstop right behind him and I was like, ‘It looks exactly the same — the fastball and the split.’ And then the slider (too).

“Obviously, an electric fastball, but the split is pretty good. I think it just looks the same.”

The 22-year-old Yesavage started his season with the single-A Dunedin Blue Jays of the Florida Complex League and moved his way through every level of Toronto’s full-season minor-league system, arriving in the big leagues as a September call-up.

Yesavage earned a win in his three regular-season starts for the Blue Jays, with a 3.21 earned-run average and 16 strikeouts over 14 innings of work. He made his post-season debut on Oct. 5, striking out 11 Yankees over 5 1/3 innings of no-hit baseball as Toronto went on to beat New York 13-7.

Although Yesavage’s MLB data set is relatively small, so far he has thrown his fastball 45.2 per cent of the time, a slider (a breaking ball that moves horizontally) 28.5 per cent, and his splitter 26.4 per cent. The splitter is clearly his out-pitch, however, as it resulted in 10 of his 16 regular-season strikeouts.

“It’s a swing-and-miss pitch. I’m just trying to get the hitter to swing over it,” said Yesavage. “It comes in the same way as my fastball, but it’s slower and then falls right before it gets to the strike zone.

“It falls off the table almost, as it’s perceived.”

Hentgen, who was a member of the Blue Jays teams that won the World Series in 1992 and 1993, thinks it’s more than just the dramatic vertical break of Yesavage’s splitter that makes it effective. He believes it’s the combination of the rookie’s splitter in tandem with his increasingly accurate fastball.

“His splitter is really good. It’s consistent. And when I say consistent, it’s not so much the speed and the movement, it is a release point,” said Hentgen. “The one thing I noticed over the year with him is his fastball command just kept getting better with every challenge, with every level, and that’s really what’s separating him now from like a year ago, when I first saw him pitch, when we first got him.”

— With files from Gregory Strong in New York City.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 10, 2025.

John Chidley-Hill, The Canadian Press