ESPN gives reasons to slow the Trey Yesavage hype train for Blue Jays originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

Trey Yesavage took the major leagues by storm in the playoffs for the Toronto Blue Jays.

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And he’s rightfully ranked as the No. 14 prospect in all of baseball by ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel.

At the same time, though, McDaniel warns that there is reason to slow the hype train just a bit on Yesavage.

“When looking at the front-line starters in the majors, a lot of them are former pro prospects as position players (Yesavage wasn’t) and almost all of the right-handed versions are breaking ball dominant,” McDaniel writes, referring in this case to Yesavage’s splitter. “There’s long been a scouting bias against right-handers whose changeups are well ahead of their breaking balls.”

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McDaniel then calls Yesavage an “exception,” but still doesn’t let him off the hook.

“Yesavage is an exception in a few ways,” McDaniel writes. “His splitter is either a 70- or 80-grade pitch; his fastball is an above-average pitch; his command works in a starting role; and his slider is close to average. His superhigh release and backup slider shape gives him some baked-in deception, possibly for the long term.”

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In the end, McDaniel wonders if Yesavage will end up like Michael Wacha, who has had a solid big league career but not necessarily been the star that the Blue Jays’ righty looked like in the postseason.

“Wacha is an example of a changeup-over-breaking ball righty who started his career hot (and as a rookie in the playoffs) then settled as a solid-not-spectacular starter,” McDaniel writes.

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Yesavage will get all kinds of chances with the Blue Jays to prove he can be more than this. And even if he just has a career like Wacha, that will still be valuable to Toronto.

But there are certainly plenty of Blue Jays fans dreaming bigger with Yesavage after those playoffs, and they’ll be hoping they’re more right than ESPN on this one.

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