After making just three starts in the major leagues, Trey Yesavage took the world by storm in the 2025 playoffs including a 12 strikeout gem in the World Series. At such a young age Yesavage has already proven he can thrive in the highest leverage situations and handling high pressure situations effectively is a massive green flag that makes me excited about Yesavage in the long run. At the same time, I also recognize that Yesavage as a 22 year old pitcher with a very high arm slot was going to be slow played even before he landed on the IL with a shoulder impingement and this creates a weird situation where the public perception could take a temporary, but significant dip in value.

So before I get into talking about the injury let’s talk about why Yesavage would have been slow played even if he were healthy. Between a deep playoff run lasting until the start of November and pitchers and catchers reporting on February 11th, that means that the Jays’ offseason was shortened to just 3 months. For an athlete this effectively means that as soon as they finish with their recovery and mobility phase it is close to when they need to prepare for the upcoming season. In other words, with a shortened offseason it would be difficult to create a four to six week block of time dedicated to building strength.

Another important factor to consider before discussing the shoulder injury itself is team context. As of April 5th, the Blue Jays have Kevin Gausman, Dylan Cease, Max Scherzer, and Eric Lauer in the rotation and Yesavage, Jose Berrios, Shane Bieber, Cody Ponce, and Bowden Francis (who will miss the whole 2026 season with TJ surgery) on the IL. The Jays have already called up Patrick Corbin and could also call up players like  Jake Bloss, Ricky Tiedemann, Adam Macko, Lazaro Estrada, or Gage Stanifer to bridge the gap.

The Blue Jays have depth and as a team with deep playoff aspirations the goal for them is to keep everyone healthy down the stretch in September and October when winning is extra important to them. With lots of depth in the rotation, the Jays are following the next-guy-up philosophy of the teams like the Rays, Guardians, Brewers and Dodgers which means they might be more likely to be a team proactively putting players onto the IL with a minor injury in order to prevent a long term injury.

With more teams using the IL proactively, that could be a good sign for why Yesavage was placed onto the IL, but I still have some pause for concern because the injury is specifically a shoulder impingement. Speaking from personal experiences having dealt with a shoulder impingement in the past one thing I noticed as I returned to playing sports is that for the first few months I had a lower arm slot for throwing motions. This could be especially problematic for Yesavage because what makes him so special is his extremely high 64 degree arm angle. While that might not feel like it’s significant, let’s see a visualization of what this looks like in comparison to all other pitchers in baseball from July 1st:

Link to visual here.

What this visual shows is that what makes Yesavage so successful is that he throws out of an extreme 64 degree high arm slot and his shoulder release point is actually closer to the typical shoulder release point of a lefty. The importance of this is that Yesavage creates unique pitch breaks and movement patterns that batters aren’t used to seeing, which causes deception. While I haven’t been able to find any data or video analysis of his arm angle dropping or remaining the same in his Triple-A rehab start at the time of writing this article, if his arm angle were to drop then Yesavage could temporarily lose some of what makes him effective in the majors.

Fantasy Baseball Takeaways:
I’m a big believer in Trey Yesavage in the long term, but I do have some short term questions about him. That being said I do believe many fantasy managers could have forgotten about him by now which could create a timely opportunity to capitalize on the public perception dropping.

For me in a dynasty league I’m not selling Yesavage right now under any scenario (unless I get an offer I can’t refuse). Even if I’m pushing my chips in to win now I believe I’ll get a better return if I exercise patience and wait for people to start talking about him again.

In a league where I’m either rebuilding or about a year away from competing, Yesavage remains a great buy low target of mine, but I’m going to still exercise cautious about how I approach targeting him. Since my goal is to capitalize on the timing of his perceived value dipping, I’m only trying to acquire him if I believe the other manager is lower on him than I am. To do this, I’m going to try something like saying “I’m looking for a high end pitching prospect that is either at/near the majors” and choosing Yesavage amongst a list of options or I’m trying to add him into a larger trade as the second or third player in a larger trade like in a hypothetical trade of Kyle Schwarber and Chris Sale for Samuel Basallo, Colt Emerson, and then adding in Yesavage as that last key player. Again my goal here is to target him indirectly in order to acquire him without paying the tax associated with acquiring the player you really like.