Before taking questions about Monday’s Game 2 start against the Seattle Mariners, Trey Yesavage had something else to address. Fans have been harassing his family online, and the Blue Jays rookie decided to say something about it publicly.
Yesavage didn’t get into specifics about what his parents, brothers, and girlfriend have been receiving or identify whether it’s coming from angry Yankees fans or sports bettors. He just wanted it to stop.
“Living in this world where there’s so many different opinions and feelings which results in a lot of hate, it’s sad to see that people close to me are being attacked for my performances on the field,” Yesavage said. “These people have done nothing to warrant negativity for my actions, whether that’s my parents, my brothers, my girlfriend, family. It’s just really sad.”
The timing tracks back to Toronto’s 13-7 win over New York in Game 2 of the ALDS on Oct. 5. The 22-year-old dominated with 11 strikeouts across 5.1 hitless innings. A few days later, the Blue Jays knocked the Yankees out of the playoffs. Somewhere between that performance and Sunday’s press conference, people started attacking his parents, brothers, and girlfriend online.
It could be Yankees fans. It could be bettors who lost money. Yesavage didn’t say, and it doesn’t really matter. Someone decided a baseball game justified going after his family.
“I know I have the platform to address it, so I am,” Yesavage said. “I hope that people can realize that those individuals have nothing to do with what happens on the field or whatnot. If you have a problem, I’m a man; I can take whatever opinions anybody has about me or my life.”
Blue Jays manager John Schneider wasn’t aware of the harassment until Yesavage brought it up. He backed his pitcher for using the moment to address it.
“I give him a ton of credit for a guy that is 22 and just arrived in the big leagues and understands that he has a really, really good support system that is around him and has a platform to talk about it,” Schneider said. “It’s unfortunate that that’s a reality.”
This isn’t new. Athletes across sports deal with it constantly.
Last year, WNBA star Aliyah Boston quit social media entirely after getting bombarded by harassment from what she called “couch coaches” and sports bettors. She told Uproxx in August that seeing the same negativity repeatedly made it hard not to second-guess herself.
“People forget that we’re human, and the moment that you put the human perspective into it, it should change what you say,” Boston said. “At the end of the day, if this was your daughter, your niece, your cousin getting hate spewed toward them, you would want to make it stop.”
There’s always been a line between criticizing athletes and harassing them. Social media obliterated that line. Now, fans have direct access to athletes and their families with zero consequences for whatever they decide to say. Anonymous accounts, burner profiles, people who’ll never face accountability for the messages they send.
The sports betting explosion has made it worse. Lose money on a game, blame the athlete, find their family on Instagram. It’s a pattern that repeats itself every week across every sport.
Yesavage starts Game 2 of the ALCS on Monday against Seattle. He earned that start by pitching well in the division series. Now he has to take the mound knowing his family is still dealing with fallout from that performance.
A 22-year-old rookie shouldn’t need to spend a playoff press conference asking people to stop harassing his parents. But that’s where we are with fan behavior in 2025.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.