Trey Yesavage's devastating splitter turned heads as he routed the New York Yankees in the American League Division Series, and the Blue Jays' rookie pitcher will likely be Toronto's starter when they host Game 2 of the AL Championship 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 has a high release point in the high arm slot,” said Blue Jays legend Pat Hentgen, who now works as a special assistant in Toronto's pitching department. “It's a little bit like Juan Guzman, a guy I played with, whose arm slot was higher than most guys, like a gyroscopic slider that would literally go down and the league thought he broke his finger, but it was actually his broken ball.
“I think it was because of his high release point, and Trey has this unique high release point.”
A fastball is exactly what it sounds like: a ball thrown as hard as the pitcher can with the intention of getting past the hitter but staying in the strike zone. The most common fastball in today's game is the four-seam, in which the pitcher's fingers grip four stitches of the ball.
Splitters are thrown with the force of a fastball, but because of the way the pitcher grips them (usually forming a V with two fingers on either side of the ball), they fall sharply as they approach home plate. Because they have the same throwing motion as a fastball but are slower and move downhill more, the fastball and splitter are used in tandem to keep batters guessing.
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What makes Yesavage's pitch unique in MLB is that his arm slot is at the 12 o'clock position. In other words, when he throws either a fastball or a splitter, he releases the ball directly over his head, whereas every other pitcher in baseball has his arm at some angle when he throws.

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“He's capable of throwing two pitches from the same high release point,” said Hentgen, who won the Cy Young Award with the Blue Jays as the American League's best pitcher in 1996. “One is 95 mph and the other is 85 mph, and that's just a very tough recipe for a hitter.”
Even Yesavage's teammates can't tell the difference when the ball first leaves his hand.
“I think it looks like a fastball,” Blue Jays infielder Andres Jimenez said Monday. “I was at shortstop right behind him and I thought, 'It looks exactly the same, fastball and split.' And then the slider (too).
“Obviously it's an electric fastball, but the separation is pretty good. I think it looks the same.”
Yesavage, 22, began his season with the Dunedin Blue Jays' singles team of the Florida Comprehensive League and worked his way through all levels of Toronto's full-season minor league system, arriving in the major leagues as a call-up in September.
Yesavage had a win in three regular-season starts for the Blue Jays with a 3.21 earned run average and 16 strikeouts in 14 innings of work. He made his postseason debut on October 5, striking out 11 Yankees in 5 1/3 hitless innings as Toronto beat New York 13–7.
While Yesavage's MLB data set is relatively small, he currently throws his fastball 45.2 percent of the time, his slider (a breaking ball that moves horizontally) 28.5 percent, and his splitter 26.4 percent. This splitter is clearly his underdog, however, as it resulted in 10 of his 16 strikeouts in the regular season.
“It's a miss ball. I'm just trying to get the hitter to jump over it,” Yesavage said. “It flies just like my fastball, but slower, and then drops right before it gets to the strike zone.
“He almost falls off the table the way it’s perceived.”
Hentgen, who was a member of the Blue Jays' World Series-winning teams in 1992 and 1993, believes the effectiveness of Yesavage's splitter depends on more than just the sharp vertical break. He believes it's a combination of the rookie's splitter in tandem with his increasingly accurate fastball.
“His splitter is really good. He's consistent. And when I say consistent, I don't mean so much speed and movement, but a release point,” Hentgen said. “The one thing I've noticed with him all year is that his fastball command has gotten better with every test, with every level, and that's really what sets him apart now from what it was a year ago when I first saw him pitch, when we first got him.”
— With files from Gregory Strong in New York.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 10, 2025.
© 2025 The Canadian Press