Blue Jays Name Trey Yesavage, Shane Bieber Starters for Next Two ALCS Games
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The American League Championship Series is finally here. The Toronto Blue Jays and the Seattle Mariners both fought their way for both the AL Pennant and a berth to the World Series on the line. The best-of-seven series started on Sunday in Toronto.
The Mariners haven't released who their probable pitchers are for the next couple games, but the Blue Jays have and it is young gun Trey Yesavage ready to make the mound for Game 2. This will be the 22-year-old's second career playoff start and fifth-ever in the Majors as Yesavage only made his debut less than a month ago.
Yesavage will be followed by Shane Bieber, former American League Cy Young award winner. Bieber will throw the first pitch for the Blue Jays at T-Mobile Stadium in Seattle in Game 3. Neither Yesavage or Bieber have spent much time pitching in the Majors this season, for entirely different reasons, but the Jays trust in both of them to take the ball in critical games.
Yesavage and Bieber with the Blue Jays
Yesavage stepped onto a professional baseball field in any capacity for the first time this season. The Blue Jays drafted him in the first round in 2024, but he didn't start in the minors until this year. He started in Single-A and worked his way up to Triple-A where he had made four starts before the official call up.
So far, the young man has done nothing but impress. His regular-season debut was on the road against the Tampa Bay Rays where he struck out nine in five innings allowing a single earned run. Then with the AL East title on the line, he threw a scoreless five innings at Rogers Centre.
His first playoff start was historic. He now owns the record for the Blue Jays for the most strikeouts in a postseason game (11) after just over five hitless innings of work.
Trey Yesavage has set a @BlueJays franchise record for strikeouts in a #Postseason game.
— MLB (@MLB) October 5, 2025
He needed just 4 innings. pic.twitter.com/A7psDYABVj
Bieber joined the Blue Jays this season at the trade deadline even though he had yet to throw a pitch in a Major League game as he was still recovering from his Tommy John surgery from the year prior. He only made seven starts before the postseason and he went 4-2 with 37 strikeouts, but his one playoff start this year didn't go too well.
Back on Oct. 7 against the New York Yankees he was pulled before the end of the third inning after allowing three runs on five hits. He is looking to bounce back and pitch like the award winner that he is. His previous postseason starts were in 2022 with the Cleveland Guardians. In only a pair of games he struck out 15 batters and had an ERA of 2.03.
Yesavage and Bieber are following the respectable performance that Kevin Gausman had in the opener of this series. Gausman went nearly six innings (five scoreless) where he struck out five and had a pair of earned runs.
The first pitch of game two is set to be thrown at 5:03 ET as the Blue Jays try to advance to their first World Series since 1993.
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Maddy Dickens resides in Loveland, Colorado. She grew up with two older brothers, where their lives revolved around sports. She earned a master's degree in business management from Tarleton State University while simultaneously playing basketball and competing in rodeo at the collegiate level. She successfully parlayed a reserve national championship into a professional rodeo career and now stays involved in upper-level athletics by writing for On SI on several different MLB teams' pages, along with some NCAA sites.