Three American League East teams stared each other down in the 2025 MLB postseason. After dispatching the Boston Red Sox, the New York Yankees advanced to a Division Series matchup with the division-winning Toronto Blue Jays.
Baseball is at its best when rivals play to win or go home. And with such high stakes, players in those rivalries, especially rookies, are put to baseball’s ultimate test.
If the performances of Trey Yesavage, Cam Schlittler and Connelly Early don’t scream “ice in their veins” to you, I don’t know what to say.
Game 3 between the Red Sox and Yankees saw two of these young arms face off as Early went for the Red Sox and Schlittler for the Yankees. New York shut out Boston behind Schlittler’s dominant performance, and Early took the loss, as the Red Sox fell to their biggest rivals.
But that doesn’t tell the whole story.
Early allowed three earned runs on six hits and was pulled from the game after 3.2 innings. But before that, he was dealing. He struck out six, including formidable lefties Ben Rice, Trent Grisham and Jazz Chisholm Jr.
He also kept Aaron Judge, one of the best hitters on the planet, in the yard. Judge hit a weak fly ball and a grounder to the infield — both of which were unlikely to fall for hits based on launch angle and velocity.
In a small major league sample size, Early has been elite. He generates swings-and-misses, limits walks and keeps the ball inside the park.
That’s because he has six individual pitches with diverse movement profiles, making it hard for hitters to guess what’s coming.
Early struck out 11 Athletics players in his major league debut. Though the A’s were a bad team overall this year, the team’s offense was seventh in home runs and eighth in on-base plus slugging.
But Early’s postseason performance paled in comparison to the Yankees’ Schlittler.
Schlittler had the best start of his professional career in that winner-take-all Game 3, striking out 12 Boston batters. That’s counting the minor leagues, where he never reached 10 strikeouts in a start.
He became the first playoff starter in MLB history to pitch eight scoreless innings while amassing 12 strikeouts and no walks.
Beginning the season with the Double-A Somerset Patriots, no one expected him to be starting a winner-take-all matchup with the Yankees’ biggest rival. But Schlittler, a born-and-bred Red Sox fan from just outside Boston, stepped up to the moment to dominate his childhood team.
Stuff+ is a complicated metric that basically aims to measure how nasty a pitcher’s arsenal is. Out of all pitchers who threw more than 70 innings in 2025, Schlittler was the 13th-nastiest.
The hulking 6-foot-6-inch Schlittler is imposing on the mound. While his fastball came in at an average velocity for a major league pitcher at the beginning of the year, New York’s minor league coaches worked hard to help him improve that.
It led to Schlittler pitching a 2.96 earned run average with 84 strikeouts in 73 innings this year, and it ended with him throwing heat over 100 miles per hour in the game of his life.
Having sunk the Sox, Schlittler’s squad went on to face the AL East rival Blue Jays in the Division Series. There, the Yankees met Toronto’s secret weapon in Trey Yesavage. Schlittler’s counterpart could not be any more different, stylistically speaking.
Before his first playoff appearance, Yesavage had pitched a grand total of 14 major league innings. He started the season in Low-A Dunedin.
But he, too, met the moment. The rookie set a Blue Jays record for most strikeouts in a playoff game with 11.
He needed only four innings.
After that, he continued pitching into the sixth and left without having given up a hit. Toronto scored 13 runs and cruised to an easy victory.
To add to the aggressiveness, Yesavage might have been tipping — giving away which pitch he was about to throw through body language — during that game, and the Yankees couldn’t take advantage.
Yesavage only has three pitches to choose from. His fastball isn’t particularly fast. What makes Yesavage so unique is his absurdly high-arm angle and release point. Hitters aren’t accustomed to that.
He throws from a 63 degree angle, one of the highest in the majors. He releases the ball from more than seven feet above the ground, a method employed by future Hall of Famer Justin Verlander. Facing him, the ball looks like it’s coming from higher than most hitters have ever seen.
Like the others, Yesavage also had a strong debut, striking out nine and only allowing one earned run in five innings against the Tampa Bay Rays in September.
An unhittable arsenal. An overpowering fastball. And one of the most bizarre arm angles in baseball.
Early is 23, Schlittler is 24 and Yesavage is 22. A new era is just beginning.
None were considered likely playoff starters in 2025. They worked their way up and found their big October moments anyway.
Expect each of them to crack their clubs’ starting rotations easily next year — and for each to herald their teams in the war for the AL East.
