The Toronto Blue Jays: Prospect Drafts, Waves and Tides

Baseball America recently published their organizational rankings of MLB prospects, and the Toronto Blue Jays slipped into the bottom third of teams. Unsurprisingly, Toronto’s Management has received much criticism regarding the Blue Jays ranking. Some observers have opined that Toronto, under the Ross Atkins Regime, has drafted poorly. Let’s dig into it to see if that assessment is valid.

In a September 17, 2018 Toronto Star article, Mark Shapiro said, “… you need to have waves of talent coming, and you need to have dozens of prospects — not two, three, five prospects.” In surfing terms, did the prospect wave ever come? If yes, is the tide currently out, but new waves are unlikely to form soon? Let’s take a deep dive into the Atkins Regime and prospects.

There are a few ground rules to acknowledge. First, when I mention drafting, I refer to the MLB June Amateur Draft, not the Rule 5 or any other draft.

Second, I determined each team’s draft success by using bWAR. For each player drafted, I applied their MLB bWAR total to date. For this draft evaluation, there are two limitations to bWAR.

• A team’s bWAR total may initially be skewed positively if they drafted a disproportionate number of college players compared to high school players. All things being equal, college players, who may not ultimately be as good as high school players, will be on an MLB roster sooner and begin accumulating bWAR.
• Any numerical-based assessment is for a given point in time. I determined each team’s bWAR total at the end of the 2023 season. Accordingly, the bWAR totals will differ after the 2024 campaign and possibly the team rankings. However, despite these limitations, bWAR is a good, objective measure of a team’s drafting success.

Third, Baseball America’s prospect rankings include drafted and signed players, international signings, and those acquired by trade. I will discuss Baseball America’s rankings, but my primary focus will be players drafted in MLB’s June Amateur Draft.

Fourth, readers should note that a team’s ranking can change for many reasons, including prospects traded or acquired, promotions to the Big Show and updated prospect projections.

Fifth, I don’t believe hindsight should be used to determine whether a draft selection was good, bad or indifferent. Drafting is made with incomplete, imperfect information, like making a player trade. In other words, player drafts are inherently risky because much is unknown when the team makes the pick selection. Therefore, after the fact, I prefer to look at a draft selection as either working out or not, as opposed to whether the pick was good, bad or indifferent.

Baseball America

Baseball America ranked Toronto’s system as #24 among MLB organizations. In previous rankings, starting in 2019 and continuing to 2023, the Blue Jays were #3, #6, #4, #19, and #15. It should be noted that Baseball Prospectus scored Toronto as the twenty-third best, and The Athletic’s Keith Law positioned Toronto in the twentieth slot.

As part of my research for the article, I listened to two podcasts concerning Baseball America’s evaluation of Toronto’s system. On February 5, Baseball America’s Geoff Pontes appeared on the JD Bunkis Podcast. Then, the next day, Baseball America released a podcast with Pontes and colleague J.J. Cooper, discussing Toronto’s prospects. Here are the highlights from these two podcasts.

JD Bunkis Podcast

• Pontes discussed Baseball America’s ranking process, which assigns points to prospects, which are then accumulated to produce the organizational rankings.
• He noted that the point differentials between the 13^th and 25^th-ranked clubs are small. Pontes stated that there is a clear distinction between the top-7 and bottom-3.
• According to Pontes, one of the reasons why Toronto’s rating has slipped is because of the type of players drafted.
• Generally, Toronto has opted for high-floor prospects over high-ceiling prospects. Accordingly, the Jays have many fringe regular players, fourth outfielders and relievers. These players are valuable depth pieces but not exciting prospects.
• On the positive front, Pontes noted that Toronto ranked sixth in Baseball America’s 2023 MLB Farm System Statcast Pitching Rankings report. Below is an excerpt.

The Blue Jays are the surprise at sixth overall, but when you look under the hood, there’s sound reasoning behind it. The Blue Jays rank first in chase rate across all pitch types and sixth in xwOBA against. They rank first in curveball chase rate, third in four-seam fastball chase, fifth in sliders and eighth in changeups. Their pitchers also throw the flattest four-seam fastballs of any organization, ranking first in vertical approach angle. That hints at possible characteristic Toronto targets.

Baseball America Podcast

• Pontes is very high on Ricky Tiedemann and Orelvis Martinez. He sees both players as candidates to play in the Majors in 2024. Martinez may even break with the club out of Spring Training.
• From a potential perspective, Toronto’s system has many contributors but not stars.
• Pontes said, “A lot of guys, not many dudes.”
• However, the system is indicative of Toronto’s approach. Like the Guardians, Toronto has targeted hitters with low K and high BB profiles. Whereas other teams have opted for more hit tool risk (offset by potential impact, on-base ability or defensive value), the Blue Jays have not.
• Yet, Pontes observed that Toronto had acquired potential impact bats (Martinez and Enmanuel Bonilla) from the international signings market.
• In Baseball America’s 2023 MLB Farm System Statcast Hitting Rankings report, the following opinion appeared:

The Dodgers, Brewers, Blue Jays and Padres rank within the top 10 in contact rate and chase rate, giving these four organizations the distinction of the teams with the best plate skills.

• In Pontes’s opinion, Toronto has done a “Good job of identifying pitching throughout the draft in a variety of roles.”
• According to Pontes, Toronto’s approach has not worked in the first two rounds (skilled, higher floor, college players such as Austin Martin) but has in the later draft rounds.
• Arjun Nimmala, the Blue Jays 2023 first-round pick, differs from previous round-one selections. He is a young, toolsy player who profiles as an everyday shortstop with power.

Organizational Rankings

Baseball America is a valuable resource for prospect information. However, they are not infallible. Please take a look at Table 1.

I selected Baseball America’s top five organizations from the 2015-2019 publications (this timeframe provides enough runway to evaluate the team ratings). Furthermore, I compiled bWAR (to the end of the 2023 season) for the top ten players for each of the top five teams. As a point of comparison, I included the top 10 prospects of the 19^th-ranked organization. Why #19? Toronto was the 19th-ranked team in BA’s 2022 report, between 2024’s 24^th slot and 2023’s 15^th grade. Lastly, I ranked the six organizations (Top Five and the 19^th-ranked club) by bWAR.

The reader can see that in two of the five years, the 19^th-ranked club slotted last. However, in 2018, Miami’s Top-Ten prospects scored the second-most bWAR, and the 2015 Oakland A’s bWAR from their Top-Ten was top of the charts.

The conclusion I draw from Table 1 is that a high organizational Baseball America ranking does not guarantee a bright future, nor does a lower-level ranking mean certain bleakness. Furthermore, the 2015 Oakland example illustrates the challenge of reliably projecting future performance levels of prospects.