Toronto Blue Jays Top 31 Prospects

Arm soreness and the strictly manicured workload that followed greatly limited Tiedemann’s 2023 regular season output. He spent most of the year at Double-A New Hampshire (with some rehab outings sprinkled in) before a Fall League stint that boosted his season-long innings total to 62. He’s yet to truly test his mettle as a professional starter, with the 78.2 innings he threw in 2022 representing his high-water mark thus far. While he’s still on track for an impact starter role, there’s an industry-wide desire to see Tiedemann prove he can hold his excellent stuff for 120 or so frames.

When he has been healthy, however, Tiedemann’s stuff has indeed been excellent. He relies heavily on a wicked, mid-to-high-90s four-seamer thrown from a deceptively low lefty arm slot that keeps hitters in either batter’s box uncomfortable. He primarily pairs it with a sweeper that has a boatload of horizontal movement, so much in fact that at times it’s easy for hitters to lay off of it. This is a great strike-getting weapon because it starts in the lefty batter’s box and finishes on the arm-side corner of the plate. Tiedemann’s changeup is also pretty good, though more because his command of it has progressed; on pure stuff, it’s only fair. You can get a detailed look at his delivery and pitches via the linked video. He already has two plus pitches and one that pretty comfortably projects to be above average, and with them Tiedemann posted a strikeout rate above 44% and a 1.68 FIP while holding opposing hitters to a batting average below .200 in 2023.

Aspects of Tiedemann’s delivery are unique in a way that makes him look reliever-y, but even if he ends up in the bullpen, he’s going to be such a dominant reliever that he’ll still belong about this high on a prospect list. He doesn’t have to be put on the Blue Jays’ 40-man until after the 2025 season, but especially if they feel like he can help them contend in 2024, it’s possible Tiedemann kicks down the door and cuts his teeth at the big league level as a long reliever before transitioning back into the rotation down the line.

Martinez has been noteworthy for such a long time that it’s easy to forget that he’s still just 22. He was signed out of the Dominican Republic in 2018 and immediately started turning heads when he posted a 150 wRC+ as a 17-year-old in rookie ball, and while he’s hit stumbling blocks along the way, his power has never really been an issue. More questionable was whether or not he’d perform despite a free-wheeling, slider-chasing approach that resulted in enough swing-and-miss to dampen his slugging capability until 2022, when he started getting to his power at a new level. In 2023, he seemed to turn another corner, lowering his strikeout and swinging strike rates while working deeper counts against opposing pitchers. Not only did he reach significantly more full counts in 2023 (129) than he had in 2022 (86), but his performance in those counts improved, with his OPS skyrocketing from .610 to 1.061 on 3-2 offerings. His promotion to Triple-A came with a noticeable uptick in swinging strikes and strikeouts, but that type of hiccup is common as minor leaguers move up the ladder. Plus, Orelvis has now made relevant adjustments a couple of times. Even with the uptick in strikeouts, his slash line improved in every column at Buffalo, and he finished the season with a 105 wRC+ despite being several years younger than the average Triple-A player. Orelvis typically leaves the building to his pull-side, yanking hanging breaking balls out past the left field foul pole.

His bat is good enough to quiet the qualms about his best defensive fit. Orelvis has mostly played shortstop, but his time trended more toward third base and then finally second base, which he began to learn after his promotion to Buffalo. He’s not particularly rangy or skilled at any one spot. Martinez has good max-effort arm strength, but he throws from a weird, slingy, awkward-looking armslot. Second base seems the most comfortable fit for him overall, but even if he’s a defensive nomad, his power, along with the improvements he’s made at the plate in order to get to it more consistently, is enough to warrant finding room for him in a big league lineup.

Nimmala was one of the youngest prospects in the 2023 draft and also one of the most projectable, both because of his big, broad-shouldered frame and because he’s new enough to baseball to merit deeper, skill-centric projection. Nimmala already hits the ball very hard. He is a ferocious rotator and is able to generate considerable power because of the strength and quickness of his hitting hands, which are gigantic. While aspects of his swing make him vulnerable to breaking balls on the outer third, Nimmala is able to create big power in a relatively short distance, and his swing isn’t overly noisy or hard to maintain. He has a tendency to pull off of stuff bending away from him and struck out much more than expected during his senior spring, enough that he slid from near the top of Eric’s draft rankings to the back of the first round based on his spring look. After the draft, Arjun had trouble picking up breaking balls in pro ball. There are past examples of players who were suddenly K-prone as seniors and had things still work out (Nolan Gorman), while there are others for whom the strikeouts proved to be a meaningful signal (Keoni Cavaco). At his size, Nimmala is more likely to end up at third base than he is to stay at shortstop, which means he has very little hit tool margin for error. The skill foundation here is still very exciting, though. Nimmala’s age and power combination is incredibly rare, and his upside hasn’t changed, but as time has drawn on, the perception about his likelihood to reach it has. This is a prospect of extreme variance, one of the bigger boom-or-bust types in the minors. This FV weighs outcomes on either end of the spectrum. We badly want to see progress in the breaking ball recognition department throughout the next year or so.

The Blue Jays coaxed Barger away from a Florida commitment with $270,000, and he barely played during his first two full seasons, one of them lost to the pandemic. Toronto didn’t accelerate his promotion schedule to make up for the lost time, so he began 2021 back at Low-A as a 21-year-old and (mostly) flew under the FanGraphs prospect radar as an old-for-the-level player until 2022, when Barger hammered High- and Double-A pitching as a 22-year-old. Barger dealt with an elbow issue in 2023 and was limited to just shy of 90 games, and he didn’t perform quite as well as in 2022. Still, by the end of the year, we were confident he felt no ill effects from the elbow because Barger’s superhuman arm strength and cacophonous swing were both intact. His hack is a spectacle, lots of fun when he’s on time and frustrating when he’s late, utilizing a narrow, open stance and a huge leg kick. Barger can really cut it loose and is a threat to do damage on every swing, but his style is going to lead to plenty of strikeouts.

Barger’s defensive forecast has slid down the spectrum a bit, and we now think he’ll play a combination of 3B and RF rather than the middle infield (which he still played some of in 2023). We think he’ll be fine (but not great) at third and are excited about his potential defensive impact in right field because of his arm (which also hides some of his infield ills). We project that Barger will get to enough power to be the larger half of a 3B/RF platoon, and given Toronto’s need for lefty bats and the departure of Matt Chapman, 2024 feels like his year to debut and contribute.

It’s about time for Jimenez, who has just one option remaining, to make a big league roster. He’s a solid shortstop defender who, for the last several years, has made premium rates of contact, including a nearly 90% Z-contact% this year at Double-A New Hampshire, where he slashed .287/.372/.436 before a late August promotion to Buffalo. Jimenez, who has been on the Jays 40-man for two years, owns a .388 career OBP in the minors. He likely won’t sustain quite that level of bat-to-ball performance against big league arms, but this is his carrying tool on offense. Jimenez checks some, but not all, of our visual scouting boxes for contact excellence. He’s short-levered and consistently on time, but his swing path leaves him vulnerable to high fastballs, which is atypical for a hitter with a statistical profile like his. Santiago Espinal (two options left) is the one most directly blocking Jimenez on the Jays’ depth chart as the team’s best-gloved utilityman. Ideally, Jimenez would branch out beyond just his usual 2B/SS in 2024 and be rostered as a utilityman within the next year. If he’s optioned to start 2024, then he’s a mandatory carry in 2025 and beyond.

The oft-injured Brock never accumulated more innings in a single collegiate season than he did during his 31 inning freshman campaign. His stuff — both pure velo and slider quality — made him an attractive Day Two pick despite him throwing merely 12 innings as a fourth year junior in 2022. Brock was healthy and deployed in long relief during his first full pro season in 2023, and the Jays promoted him fairly aggressively to Double-A New Hampshire, where he spent most of the year. All told, Brock stuck out 87 hitters in 52.2 innings. It appears the Jays tweaked his delivery a bit — his slot looks a tad higher now than it did in college, shifting the axis of Brock’s fastball for the better. His best pitch is easily his slider, which Brock has thrown more than his fastball since college. It has a late, nasty, downward movement and uncommon velocity, bending in at 87-90 mph. Hitters don’t seem to be able to pick it up, and it’s a weapon against righties and lefties alike. Brock’s command still puts him in more of a sixth- to seventh-inning middle relief bucket than the guy you’re calling in the eight or ninth, but he’s rocketing toward the big leagues and could be up in 2024.

Born in Slovakia and raised in Alberta, Macko was a top Canadian prospect when he was drafted in the seventh round of the 2019 draft. Since then, he’s been plagued by injury, which has limited his play time significantly. But he stayed healthy all year in 2023 and nearly doubled what had previously been his highest innings total for a season, jumping from just 38.1 innings in 2022 to 86 innings in 2023 (both at High-A).

He is on the shorter side for a pitcher, with very short arms even for his size, and he’s lowered his arm slot since being drafted, enhancing the deception he creates from his uphill lefty delivery, and making it difficult for hitters to adjust to it. His signature secondary is his curveball, which is cartoonishly slow – the kind of loopy offering Bugs Bunny would get three whiffs on before the ball reached the catcher. Even so, it features so much depth that while it’s relatively easy to identify out of his hand, its shape often prevents hitters from connecting with it. He uses his slider more often than the curveball – in fact, his slider usage has at times rivaled his fastball, with both sitting near 40%. The shape of the slider isn’t as impressive as that of the curveball, but it sits in the mid-80s, splitting the difference between his curve and his 92-94 mph fastball. With a low-80s changeup added to his arsenal, he is armed with a four-pitch mix with enough velocity separation to be very effective when Macko’s command is working for him. The command is inconsistent, though, and seeing as how the effectiveness of his mix depends on it, it’s an area in need of major improvement if Macko wants to find his way into a big league starting rotation. Still, we think he’s going to be a valuable weapon on a pitching staff even if he ends up as a long reliever. He’s now on Toronto’s 40-man roster, but it wouldn’t surprise us if he spent his first option year entirely in the minors with an eye on increasing his per-outing and whole-season innings count.

The Blue Jays used international pool space they acquired in the trades of Kendrys Morales and Dwight Smith to sign Zulueta just before the 2018-19 signing period ended in June of 2019. They did so knowing he’d need Tommy John, which he had shortly after signing. Finally back in the fall of 2020, Zulueta was topping out in the 94-96 mph range at Toronto’s facilities in Florida, then threw even harder in the spring of 2021, when he sat 96-99 as a non-roster invitee with the big club. He made it all of three pitches into his first start before he tore a ligament in his knee, needed surgery, and missed the remainder of the season. The 2022 season was Zulueta’s 40-man evaluation year and the Blue Jays pushed him very aggressively up the minor league ladder (as a starter), such that he made starts at each full-season minor league level, including Triple-A. We pretty confidently projected Zulueta in the bullpen last year and he made it about a month into the 2023 season before the Jays moved him there, which was a refreshing departure from the org that kept starting Nate Pearson even while their big league bullpen could have used a weapon like that.

While Zulueta’s delivery isn’t especially violent, it also isn’t especially graceful or smooth, and his feel for location is bad enough that we worry he won’t hit the late-inning ceiling that his stuff suggests he has. It was a little disappointing that he didn’t experience a velo boost out of the bullpen and sat “merely” 94-97 yet again. Yosver’s raw slider quality is incredible, but its consistency is not; automatic pitch tagging thinks he has three different breaking balls because the shape of it varies so much. Zulueta’s early-career injuries once provided reason to project on his command and consistency, but he’ll soon be 26, and while we still believe he’s going to be a meaningfully good reliever, there’s growing risk that his command will make him frustrating for long stretches at a time. We liken him to Daniel Bard, without quite as Shakespearean a career.

Before being drafted in 2022, Kasevich posted a microscopic strikeout rate in his final season at University of Oregon and continued to impress upon joining Low-A after the draft, finishing the season with more walks than strikeouts during his 25-game stint there. He spent all of 2023 at High-A, where he improved in every column of his triple-slash line, while striking out just 10.7% of the time and nearly matching that in walks, this time over a full season. His 5.2% swinging strike rate was the among the very lowest in all of the minor leagues, further illustrating his knack for getting his bat on the ball, but his minute barrel rate adds clarifying detail. Kasevich’s contact skews heavily toward singles, mostly comprised of flare popups and well-placed soft line drives to the shallow part of the outfield, making him a hyper-realized contact-over-power prospect. Defensively, Kasevich has mostly spent time at shortstop (his college position), but his range and arm utility are iffy fits there, in particular grounders to his right. He’s better moving to his glove-side, which seems conducive to a possible move to third base, where he also notched a substantial number of innings in 2023 and is likely to see more time going forward as the Jays reckon with a potentially Matt Chapman-less future. We have Kasevich forecast to produce like Kevin Newman has during his better seasons.

Barriera’s first professional season was plagued by injury. He missed all of June with an elbow injury, then returned for three starts in July, after which he was shut down for the remainder of the year with biceps soreness. Two distinct injuries to his pitching arm within such a short span of time is troubling, of course, though they help explain why his velocity was down compared to his high school look (he was in the 92-93 range in 2023). Barriera’s body also changed, and during the little bit he pitched for Dunedin, he looked much heavier than he did in high school. Some of the added weight is clearly muscle, but the rate at which his conditioning has regressed is somewhat concerning. He’ll barely be 20 when the 2024 season begins and has gone from looking like a Ricky Tiedemann clone in many ways to being built more like Graham Ashcraft. Because he’s still a teenager, the time and ability to trim down and/or build up his body’s fortitude to avoid injury is clearly here, but it’s something to watch.

When he was able to take the mound, he was a bit on the wild side, with an inordinate number of walks and HBPs, but that came with a 31.5% strikeout rate and a ridiculous 76.3% groundball rate, which was the highest in the minors for any pitcher with at least 20 innings. Granted, it’s doubtful he’d stay on the top of that column had he accrued more innings of work, but it’s still promising for the young southpaw. Barriera is still stylistically similar to Tiedemann: A low-slinging lefty with a lot of heat on his heater when he’s healthy, a lot of sweep on his sweeper, and a promising changeup, though his high school command was not great. We’re slightly discouraged by his 2023 for a number of reasons, but the ceiling here is still among the most exciting in this system. A source close to this situation told us Barriera’s weight is down and that it will be an area of continued focus for him during the offseason. We’re hopeful that he’ll bounce back and we’ve mostly left his pre-draft valuation intact, but we’re warning readers that we’ll let air out of the balloon pretty quickly if Barriera displays some of these issues again in 2024.

Rojas signed out of Cuba in October of 2020 and has slowly been percolating in Dunedin for the last three years, either on the complex or with the Low-A team. His arm strength has slowly but steadily improved during that time and he sat 92-93 throughout 2023 amid a 40-inning uptick in his workload. Rojas has an ideal pitcher’s frame and a somewhat cross-bodied delivery with a vertical arm slot. He generates about 18 inches of induced vertical break on his heater on average. Hitters of either handedness have difficulty picking up Rojas’ two-plane slider, which he can use as a strike-getting offering or as a chase pitch in the dirt. Despite his relative inexperience, Rojas has always made fairly liberal use of his changeup, which, along with his slider, garnered a plus swinging strike rate in 2023. Assuming a standard 20-inning boost, Rojas is on pace to be working about 120 annual innings starting in 2025, his 40-man evaluation year. He presents a great combo of present skill and projection, and if he shows yet another velo uptick in 2024, then he’s a threat to join the Top 100 list.

Watts-Brown was a high-profile transfer from Long Beach State to Oklahoma State in 2023. He had a down draft spring, walking a batter every other inning and posting an ERA around 5.00. But his breaking ball quality was still so good, and Brown is such a smooth operator on the mound, that he ranked 56th on our pre-draft list. JWB presents a dev-friendly foundation for the Blue Jays. His slider breaks late and his curveball has big time depth. Both of them are easily plus, while the rest of his skill set is below average. His delivery is more graceful than it is athletic and powerful (it looked like it regressed a bit at OSU), and scouts are split as to whether or not JWB is going to throw harder in pro ball. Pro teams don’t consider Oklahoma State to be especially good at developing pitchers, so perhaps there’s meat on the bone here, either in terms of coaxing more velo out of Watts-Brown by altering his mechanics or simply by helping him impart more effective movement on that pitch. He could be a no. 4 starter with an improved heater and more consistent release, and is more like a generic no. 5 or a reliever if he can only find one of those things. He was shut down and did not pitch after the draft.

Bonilla was viewed as being among the best offensive prospects in the 2023 international class, and his $4 million deal was among the first big-dollar agreements to be known about from that group. Burly and strong, he already has rare power for a prospect his age, and international scouts believed it to be weaponized by very advanced feel to hit. His first pro season did not necessarily reinforce that view. Bonilla struggled with strikeouts in the DSL (24.3% K%) and his swing often looked disconnected, his footwork often mis-timed. We discussed sliding Bonilla below this FV tier (his pre-signing FV grade), but he still has a ton of power and is very young. His bat-to-ball performance was troubling enough that it has put us on a sort of notice here, though, and if it continues or worsens in 2024, we’re poised to slide Bonilla more substantially. He’s likely to be in Dunedin for extended spring training, so we won’t have a meaningful amount of data in this regard until later in the summer. For now, we still want Bonilla’s amateur report to carry weight, so we’re keeping him in a high-upside FV tier, albeit with some apprehension that slides him toward the back of that group in this system.

Cooke has experienced a gradual velocity increase in pro ball, and he annihilated High- and Double-A hitters in 2023, posting strikeout rates above 40% (!) prior to an end-of-year stint at Triple-A Buffalo. His fastball was averaging 96 mph early in the year before tapering off into the 93-95 mph range in September, but that’s still better than Cooke was showing in college or in 2022. This is a drop-and-drive, low release height righty whose heater plays like a plus pitch because of its angle. Cooke’s sweeper command isn’t dialed in enough for him to consistently illicit bad chases, but it has a ton of length and sometimes gets whiffs even when it isn’t located well because it looks like his fastball for so long. He’s a middle relief prospect with a shot to debut in 2024, and he’ll almost certainly be up in 2025.

Doughty boasts a power-plus-contact profile, thanks to a knack for getting on top of fastballs. His 18 home runs in 2023 were tied for fifth-most in Toronto’s system. He tied for the top spot in the HR/FB column, though, matching the 18.8% posted by Orelvis Martinez, who also led the system in long balls, but Doughty’s overall fly ball rate was lower than most of the other players toward the top of the list of the Blue Jays’ most homer-heavy hitters, and was slightly outpaced by his groundball rate. His barrel rate and average launch angles were not in line with what would be expected from a prototypical power hitter (which he is not). Impressive as his bat-to-ball skills may be, they inspire an aggressive approach at the plate, with Doughty swinging early and often, and rarely getting deep into the count. Tightening up that pitch selection could allow him to better capitalize on his contact abilities.

Defensively, Doughty split his time between second and third base, mostly at the latter. He’s a high-effort infielder, and his arm accuracy isn’t great, particularly from across the diamond. His range and arm are a better fit at second base, but even there, his throws can be a bit wild on plays where he doesn’t have time to plant his feet. He’s yet to firm up a defensive home, but his bat is advanced enough that even as a nomad, he could be a valuable addition to the lineup, especially if he can show a less aggressive, more intentional offensive approach. There’s a good chance he ends up in left field, but if he can become passable at even one infield position on his way there, it will greatly improve his rosterability.

A new cutter may be the antidote to some of what we’ve perceived to be Dallas’ ills for the last few years. Like a lot of Jays pitching prospects, he has a fantastic, oft-used slider, but his lack of a viable third pitch (his changeup is an afterthought, his arm slot is clearly different for his curveball) has made us relatively light on him for the past couple of years. The new cutter isn’t monstrous or anything, but it gives Dallas a viable bridge pitch between his fastball and slider. He threw it more than any of his non-fastball/slider offerings in 2023 and also showed improvement in the strike-throwing department. There still isn’t a great way for Dallas to attack lefties; he’s reliant on the cutter to induce weak contact against them. That’s why we have Dallas projected as a backend starter rather than an impact one.

Maroudis signed for a sizable $1.5 million in order to eschew a commitment to NC State. Basically skin and bone on the 2022 showcase circuit, he looked meaningfully stronger during the spring of 2023, with fastball velos more often in the 93-95 mph range than the summer before when he would only peak there on occasion. The upshot angle of his heater gives it a shot to play at basically any velo in the 90s. Maroudis’ breaking ball quality is only okay; it tends not to have nasty bite or depth, but it does have long break at times. His changeup is identifiable out of the hand right now, but Maroudis has feel for creating action on it. Relatively advanced fastball command and a three-pitch foundation gives him a shot to start, but his breaking ball is more a potential big league weapon than a present one, and the cement is closer to dry on his frame than last summer. Maroudis did not pitch after the draft and folks should key in on any alterations to his secondary stuff next spring.

Horwitz led qualified Blue Jays minor leaguers in OPS in 2023, thanks largely to a patient, contact-driven approach at the plate. His walk rate (16.1%) surpassed his strikeout rate (14.9%) at Triple-A, and he posted a swinging strike rate of just 7.7%. He rarely expands the zone horizontally, but many of his hits came on offerings above or below the strike zone, so while swinging and missing is rare for Horwitz, when it does happen, it tends to be of the chase variety, primarily on high heaters and low breaking balls outside of the zone. He reached the big leagues in 2023, first for a cup of coffee in June, then to close out the season in September. Across that tiny sample, he didn’t quite emulate the swinging strike, contact, or walk rates that made him a Triple-A standout, but considering the higher quality of his opponents, it would be unfair to call it a skid over such a short span; indeed, he “skidded” into the league-average range for all of the above. Where to put him defensively is more of a question. He’s a 1B/DH type, but doesn’t have the power that profile typically relies on. He now must prove his contact abilities can make up for that lack of thump at the big league level.

Roden has god-tier surface-level stats dating back to college, and we think he’ll hit enough to play a big league role, but because he lacks big power and exists at the bottom of the defensive spectrum (and isn’t an especially good outfielder), he probably isn’t going to be an impact player. Roden hit .383/.484/.640 in two seasons at Creighton and slashed .317/.431/.459 in a 2023 season split across High- and Double-A. He had more walks than strikeouts prior to promotion and a miniscule 5.2% swinging strike rate on the season. The Blue Jays have already drastically altered Roden’s swing, and he now has the same very upright, Craig Counsell-ish stance followed by a big leg kick that Barger does. It’s a good-looking swing and squeezes as much as is possible out of Roden’s modest athleticism, but the change hasn’t elevated his power to a place that profiles in left field. You can really limit his damage by staying away from him and throwing Roden fastballs, which he doesn’t lift as well as secondary stuff. On top of that, Roden’s feel for contact is a little artificial, and has more to do with his short levers than precise timing and barrel feel. He’s great at adjusting to offspeed stuff and pulling inner-third stuff with lift, but he isn’t dangerous all over the zone. We like him as a platoon stopgap or bench bat, not so much as an impact hitter.

Santos entered 2023 as a pick to click of sorts. He was barely 20 years old and was coming off a stellar 2022 season during which his strikeout rate with Dunedin was just shy of the 40%; Santos amassed 120 Ks in 73.1 innings. Especially if he could add weight to his ultra-skinny frame and, by extension, velocity to his low-90s fastball, Santos may have leapt into the overall Top 100. Instead he struggled with walks for two months before he was shut down with a forearm strain in early July.

Santos is still frail looking. He is physically and mechanically similar to Jesse Chavez, utilizing a short-striding, low-slot delivery. These factors, plus Santos’ track record of relatively poor strike-throwing, point to the bullpen. Optimists can point to Santos’ excellent slider command, as well as his combination of youth and athleticism, as hopeful indicators that he can start. Santos’s low slot creates sink and tail on his fastball, and he doesn’t yet have good feel for running this shallow-angled pitch up the ladder. His changeup is still not awesome, but its usage and quality took a step forward in 2023, and you can continue to project on it based on Santos’ athleticism. There is still a greater developmental distance for Santos to travel than other arms in Toronto’s system, even the relief-only prospects. Santos definitely has more positive variance (aka higher ceiling) than those older relievers but, especially coming off the injury, he has a lower floor as well. He’s an exciting but volatile developmental starter who may end up in the bullpen soon due to his roster timeline.

A two-way amateur prospect, Toronto originally developed Danner as a catcher, but as injuries and strikeouts mounted, he returned to the mound in 2019, and immediately his fastball was in the 95-97 mph range. Danner had a UCL injury that cost him basically all of 2022, and his 2023 ended with an oblique strain. He has thrown just shy of 80 total innings as a pro. When Danner is healthy, his stuff is nasty. His fastball routinely sits 95-98 (though it plays down a bit) and his upper-80s slider, which has almost perfectly downward vertical shape, is easily a plus pitch. Danner’s role is likely to be of the middle-inning variety due to his fastball’s lack of action, and there’s obviously a lot of injury risk here as well. Expect him to get a more thorough major league look if he can stay healthy in 2024.

After missing all of 2022 due to Tommy John surgery, Van Eyk made his way back to the mound in 2023, but it was far from the return he likely hoped for. He started two Low-A games in early May, sat for a month, threw another three innings in early June, then was sidelined again until late July, when he reemerged on the complex for a couple of starts before rejoining Low-A in August. After three starts that month, and seemingly being back on a regular pitching schedule for the first time since 2021, he leapfrogged up to Double-A, finishing out the regular season there before a Fall League stint. At the higher level, his strikeout rate plummeted by nearly 20 percentage points, as he struggled to hit his spots consistently and was punished for it by the more advanced batsmen he was up against. Only about half of his offerings were in the zone (and that includes balls that were just slightly out of the zone, but still likely to be called strikes), and his out-of-zone chase rates weren’t high enough to make up for it.

What makes the wavering command most frustrating, though, is the quality of his stuff. His curveball, long considered a gem, is his best weapon for getting swings out of the zone with its plus vertical depth. He uses a more traditionally shaped slider to enhance his ability to deploy the curveball, and his changeup is deceptive thanks to his consistent arm speed. It’s a deep arsenal that somewhat mitigates the inconsistency of his fastball, which will vary in velocity and shape to the point that it’s dangerously hittable when offered up against advanced hitters.

The missed time – which has largely been due to complications from the TJ, rather than additional, unrelated injuries – and strict pitch-count limits resulted in a total of just 31.2 innings of work from the former second-rounder in 2023, and the persistent stopping and starting made it difficult for him to put together a string of dominant starts at any point in the season. But he put up better numbers during his time in the AFL, and his stuff, in particular his curveball, is tremendously enticing and could already be a viable weapon in a big-league bullpen, where his inconsistent fastball could be less of a thorn in his side.

Brown is an incredible speedster and center field defender who is very likely to play a small reserve role as a defensive replacement and pinch runner. The cracks in his offense began to show more in 2023 when he had a severe downtick in performance at High-A Vancouver. Up-the-middle guys with premium defensive ability tend to find their way onto big league rosters and Brown should have a modest career as a fifth outfielder who hits at the very bottom of the lineup on the days he starts.

De Jesus has always been a patient hitter, working counts and waiting for the pitches he knows he can get the most out of. In 2023, he swung more than the previous year and still managed to cut down on his swing-and-miss, both in and out of the zone. So he’s swinging more (but not too much), and missing less, which speaks to the improvements he’s made at the plate. The extra swings simultaneously led to fewer walks and more slugging, resulting in roughly the same OPS as 2022. The majority of his hits come on pitches within a horizontal band just above his belt, and most of his overall swings come in that area of the zone as well. He rarely expands the zone, displaying a keen ability to lay off breaking balls below it – particularly impressive given his age. That he can be selective at the plate is a good thing, but it may mean that there are holes within the strike zone that more advanced pitchers would be able to exploit, so it behooves him to diversify the pitches he can connect with as he advances.

Defensively, De Jesus still sees time at shortstop but he’s unlikely to stay there due to his comparative lack of range, and we’ve had him projected to third base here for a while now. He has difficulty finding a handle on the ball and getting it out of his glove cleanly when he’s on the run, and he sometimes gets ahead of himself in that regard, trying to get the ball out of his glove before it’s even in there, resulting it in clanging off the heal or exterior. He’s better at ranging to his left (glove side), which is why he’s a better fit at third.

When the Blue Jays selected Palmegiani in the 14th round in 2021, it was their second attempt at drafting him. The Venezuela-born, Canada-raised infielder had previously been selected in the 35th round in 2018, but instead played Division-I and junior college baseball in the US. When he did make his professional debut in 2021, he wasted no time displaying his offensive prowess, slashing .333/.458/.538 in 17 games on the complex. He’s steadily climbed the ranks of the system since then, splitting his 2022 more or less evenly between Low- and High-A, then spending the bulk of 2023 at Double-A before finishing out the season with a strong 20-game Triple-A stint. He’s consistently posted a wRC+ well above league average at every minor league stop, with his hard-hitting power an obvious stand-out trait, bolstered by savvy swing decisions and a patient approach that allows him to be selective at the plate and wait for pitches he knows he can crush. Palmegiani’s thump is largely of the pull variety and is most effective against fastballs, with 16 of his 23 home runs in 2023 (the most in the system from anyone not named Orelvis) coming on heaters, most of which were belt high, while the offspeed and breaking balls he sent out were mostly hang ‘em, bang ‘em mistakes from the pitchers. Defensively, he had spent most of his time at third base, but has never been a particularly comfortable fit there, and since reaching Triple-A, he has seemed to be more firmly planted at first base. His ability to punish pitchers for mistakes and pulverize fastballs to his pull side are good things to be sure, especially when he’s demonstrated patience, but doing so off of a greater variety of offerings will likely be necessary for him to carry his obscene offensive numbers up to the big league level.

Juenger pairs a low arm slot with a shorter build than your average pitcher to create a confusing angle that keeps hitters off balance — like a right-handed version of fellow Toronto prospect Adam Macko, but with longer arms. He spent all of 2023 at Triple-A after having finished the 2022 season there, and he worked almost exclusively out of the bullpen in one- to two-inning relief appearances. He did a better job of keeping the ball in the park in 2023, allowing just 1.31 HR/9, but he surrendered hits at a higher clip than in previous seasons, though that may largely be due to a slew of soft contact and a .375 BABIP, much higher than he’s posted previously. His fastball sits 93-96 and plays up due to the incongruity between its shape and his release point, resulting in whiff and chase rates in the mid-30s on the heater. He added some oomph to his slider, with its average velocity jumping from around 84 mph in 2022 to 87 mph in 2023. He threw it slightly more often in 2023, too, with the slide piece accounting for 21% of his pitches (up from 18% in 2022), but it was his changeup that saw the more drastic increase in usage. His cambio usage jumped from 18% to 30% in 2023, in particular against lefties. As with the fastball, both secondaries play up because the arm slot is so funky, but being funk-dependent puts pressure on his command to be effective. His walk and strikeout rates were virtually the same as they were in his shorter 2022 Triple-A stint, with both moving incrementally in the respective right direction, but he still needs to tamp down the walks, which are sitting in the 11% range. Juenger’s changeup gives him a platoon-neutralizing weapon, but none of his pitches are plus, making him a lower-leverage option.

Perez led Toronto’s FCL team in innings and posted a stellar 29% strikeout rate and a 6% walk rate. He isn’t an ultra-athletic or projectable teenage pitcher, but he is polished, sitting 91-94 with equal parts above-average rise and run. A big part of Perez’s effectiveness stems from the quality and utility of his secondary offerings. His upper-70s curveball has good depth, and he can occasionally create bat-missing arm-side action on his changeup. While he probably doesn’t have a terribly high ceiling, Perez has the kind of stuff that would go in rounds three to five were he a draft-eligible player.

At age 18, Escanio was one of the Blue Jays’ more productive DSL players in his second year down there. He’s a very athletic switch-hitter who already has experience at a few different positions. Escanio is strong for his size, and his short levers make up for what is otherwise a bit of a long swing. He’s perhaps the most tooled up non-Bonilla DSL prospect in this org, a long-term project as a utility guy.

The Jays gave Shaw a little more than a quarter of a million to sign as a ninth rounder. We think he’s one of the more interesting sleepers in the system. His hitting hands are quick and authoritative, and we love the way he uses the ground to generate modest power. Shaw continues Toronto’s pattern of targeting short-levered hitters in the amateur space. He’s a bat-first developmental second base prospect who could have an impact hit tool.

Toman was Toronto’s fourth pick in the 2022 draft (he went 77th overall), but he got the second-highest bonus at a cool $2 million, which kept him from joining the star-studded party at LSU. He had a disappointing first full season, slashing .208/.320/.313 with Low-A Dunedin. The FSL is pitcher-friendly, but Toman’s issues with whiffs aren’t park-dependent. He’s always had a better swing and more pure bat speed from the left side than the right, but Toman wasn’t tracking pitches well from either side last year. He was an inconsistent hitter on the showcase circuit, too, with fits and starts of hitting for the kind of power that earned him a big bonus.

Eric was bearish about Toman’s defense before the draft, but he looked okay at (mostly) third base in 2023. He has plenty of arm for third, and he showed better hands and actions last season than he did as an amateur. The hope was that Toman would develop into an Oswaldo Cabrera-type of player, who got to enough power to play a multi-positional role despite below-average defense. His hit tool is now in a red flag territory for a corner defender.

The compact little Pinto had a huge 2021 DSL statline (.360/.486/.543) but didn’t come stateside for instructs with the Rockies, and instead was quickly scouted on the 2022 spring backfields before Colorado traded him to Toronto as part of the Randal Grichuk deal. He has had trouble staying healthy since joining the Jays, with hamstring and quadriceps strains forcing him onto the IL three times in two years. He has played just shy of 80 games in full-season ball combined across the past two seasons. When healthy, Pinto has several catalytic qualities (plus speed and zone control, some bat-to-ball ability) while projecting as an up-the-middle defensive fit, though exactly what position is unclear. He’s played all three non-catcher up-the-middle positions as a pro. Pinto’s infield hands and actions aren’t good, and he hasn’t gotten the reps to develop there. He has the speed to play center field but hasn’t had a ton of reps there, either. Because of Pinto’s size, he lacks traditional power projection. His hit tool and defensive ability will have to carry the entire load if he’s going to be a regular in the old school leadoff man mold, but his early career bat-to-ball performance indicates he has a shot. Still, it’s more likely that he just passed the A-ball exit on the Otto Lopez highway en route to a 2B/CF utility role.