Trey Yesavage is enjoying the playoff baseball stage.
His strikeout pitch has been working for the Toronto Blue Jays, but on Sunday, he also proved how important some good fortune and luck can be.
The Seattle Mariners put a lot of guys on base against Yesavage.
But three innings in a row, he got inning-ending grounders into double plays.
According to MLB Network’s Sarah Langs, it’s the third time that has ever happened in the playoffs.
Yesavage is joined by Chris Carpenter (2005) and Tom Glavine (1995).
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Carpenter was one of the best right-handers of his generation, and Glavine is a Hall of Famer. Not bad company for Yesavage.
Yesavage also had a number of stats pop up on social media on Sunday night placing him in various impressive places on playoff strikeout lists for so early in his career. We’ll probably find a few of those before we work our way into the ballpark.
But on this night, the double plays loomed largest.
The first really summed it up.
The Mariners had superstar Cal Raleigh coming up with the bases loaded in the bottom of this inning. There was one out, and Toronto was up a pair of runs.
It seemed almost safe to assume the Mariners could get two runs.
Instead, Yesavage induced a hard grounder from Raleigh to Vlad Guerrero Jr. at first, and he started the 3-6-1 double play.
It was just the start for Yesavage, who has an amazing career ahead of him but might never do what he did on Sunday night ever again.