It’s becoming increasingly chic for major league teams to roll out secret weapons in the postseason, to stick a recent newcomer in the playoff rotation or even let a kid make his major league debut with the season on the line.

Most of the time, it’s simply for show. And then Trey Yesavage took the ball for Game 2 of the American League Division Series, and the New York Yankees did not know what hit them.

The Toronto Blue Jays right-hander, who completed a methodical climb through four levels of the minor leagues this season, struck out 11 Yankees through 5 1/3 hitless innings, including six in a row as the Blue Jays jumped out to a 12-0 lead and chased off Yankees ace Max Fried.

With one out in the fifth inning and the result seemingly well in hand, Toronto manager John Schneider slowly walked to the mound to lift Yesavage after 78 pitches, salvaging his availability later in this series. And the Rogers Centre crowd rose for a thunderous ovation, demanding and receiving a curtain call from the kid.

Just a couple hours earlier, this might have looked like a mismatch: 19-game winner, World Series champion and likely Cy Young Award finalist Fried against a kid who turned 22 in July and hadn’t thrown a professional pitch until debuting in the low Class A Florida complex league this spring.

But Yesavage – it’s appropriately pronounced something like “You savage” – throttled a Yankees lineup with three former MVPs.

His devastating splitter proved an impossible task for the Yankees, as he induced nine whiffs on 11 swings – plus six called strikes – against the first 13 batters he faced. He finished the night with a 45% whiff and called strike percentage on his 48 strikes.

But how? Well, turns out the time was just right for the Blue Jays to take the wraps off the kid.

The Yankees have never seen Trey Yesavage

It probably wasn’t an accident that Yesavage’s three major league outings in his September debut came against Tampa Bay, the Kansas City Royals and the Rays once again – clubs who would come nowhere near the Blue Jays come October.

And to the casual observer, it might have come as a surprise that Yesavage would be penciled in for a Game 2 start while future Hall of Famer Max Scherzer, the 41-year-old veteran of 25 playoff starts, was left off the ALDS roster.

Simply, unfamiliarity was Yesavage’s huge ally – regardless of what shows up on an iPad or a pitch simulator.

“I think that can be a thing, with a veteran team who can gameplan really well,” says Blue Jays manager John Schneider during an in-game interview with Fox Sports. “Like anything, you need to watch and see if they make adjustments. It’s tough to replicate on video, or Trajekt, whatever you want to call it.

“But it’s a pretty unique look, for sure.”

Said Yankees manager Aaron Boone a half-inning later: “We’re having a hard time getting a beat on that split.”

Why is Trey Yesavage’s ball hard to pick up?

At 6-foot-4, Yesavage is tall but hardly gargantuan by starting pitcher standards. His great differentiator, though, is an arm angle that registers 63 degrees, second-highest behind only the Mets’ Jonah Tong (what is it about these kids’ arm angles)?

Atop a mound 10 inches above home plate, with an arm angle most hitters have never seen before, Yesavage can be impossible to hit.

Especially when you’re not sure if what you’re seeing is the devastating splitter, the 95 mph fastball or the slider. Additionally, Yesavage has the ability to drop the splitter below the zone as hitters flail at it – or pop it in for strikes, a conundrum for hitters.

Where did this Trey Yesavage come from?

He was the 20th overall pick in the 2024 draft out of East Carolina, and the Blue Jays gave him the rest of the year off, setting him up for his odyssey from low A to high Class A to the final two steps before the Blue Jays rolled the dice and brought him to Toronto.

A Pennsylvania native, Yesavage earned some dude points by pitching in an NCAA regional for East Carolina just days after suffering a partially collapsed lung. All Yesavage did was outduel soon-to-be No. 2 overall pick Chase Burns of Wake Forest.

With Yesavage providing the leverage needed for the Jays to tee off and take a double-digit lead and likely a 2-0 ALDS lead, it’s likely we’ll get to know this young man much more – even if hitters may flail at their first encounters.

"I knew he’d do well," his mother, Cheryl, said during an in-game interview.

"I never would have expected this."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Who is Trey Yesavage? Blue Jays phenom sets record vs. Yankees in MLB playoffs

Reporting by Gabe Lacques, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect