Future Blue Jays Newsletter 5/1

Many thanks to Niall O’Donohoe of csplusbaseball.ca for the photo.

Players of the Month, lines of the week, a chat with Ashley Stephenson and more in this week’s edition.

Players of the Month

With April conveniently ending on a Sunday, we can present to you the top pitcher and position player in the system for the past month:

Pitcher

It was close, but Dunedin RHP Rafael Sanchez narrowly gets the nod over New Hampshire’s Adam Kloffenstein and Vancouver’s Chad Dallas.

The 23 year old Cuban has been lights out in the Florida State League, posting a 1.14 ERA in 23.2 IP over 4 starts. He’s fanned 31 and walked only 2. Florida hitters are managing just a .156 average against him, and his 54% GB rate trails only Kloff’s 57% among starters in the system. Sanchez’ 18% whiff rate leads the minor league organization.

Hitter

Surrey, BC’s Damiano Palmegiani was the most consistent hitter in a month that saw offence a bit slim throughout the organization. Several Vancouver hitters, including Riley Tirotta, Cade Doughty, and Josh Kasevich merited consideration, but the rainouts that took away much of the first week and a bit of the Northwest League season gave them smaller sample sizes.

Palmegiani has adjust to AA quite well, slugging .414 and getting on base at an incredible 46% of the time.

A Wild Finish to the Week

Just as we were about to put this edition to bed, a bevy of runs on one side of the continent and a scarcity of them on the other caused this little addition.

Buffalo’s formerly slumbering offence kicked into high gear in their final game with Atlanta’s Gwinnett affiliate. The Bisons pounded out 21 hits and as many runs in a drubbing of their host Georgians. L.J. Talley set a club record by going 6-6, while Spencer Horwitz drove in 6 runs.

Not to be outdone, Dunedin’s offence similarly awoke with an 18-run explosion in the first half of their twin bill with Bradenton. Six D-Jays had multi-hit games, as the club scored 10 times in the last of the 5th - all with two out.

Later, Vancouver and Eugene went to extra innings with nary a run scored between them. Alex DeJesus hit a shot over the CF wall of Rogers Field at Nat Bailey Stadium for a walkoff W in the home half of the 10th:

Just as impressive was the quintet of C’s pitchers who combined on a four-hit shutout, which included a successful return from the IL for Eric Pardinho.

Lines of the Week

 Rafael Ohashi has become the top Brazilian pitching prospect in the system. A late 2018 signing, he’s had three cracks at Singe A ball. His 2021 was sizzling, as he struck out 17 hitters over 10 IP in his first three outings. He came back to earth after that, and his workload was reduced, but he came back stronger than ever in 2022, until he was shut down in June.

His first three outings have been solid:

Ohashi doesn’t light up the radar gun, averaging just a tick over 90 with his fastball in his last start. He does use a three pitch mix with that four-seamer, slider (a true swing-and-miss option) and a changeup. Ohashi pounds the edges of the strike zone.

Only 20 years old, the 6’1”/185 Ohashi has the build to add velocity to get more separation from his secondaries.

Cheese Shreds Emeralds

 Chad Dallas won his pro debut in his first start last April, tossing 5 innings of shutout, no-hit ball for Vancouver. Over the course of his next 20 starts the second W of his career eluded him. He had his ups and downs, and that, along with the depth of starters above him, had him back in the Northwest League to start this year.

Minor League pitcher wins, of course, are about the least effective way of evaluating a prospect. Just the same, it must have been a huge relief to the 2021 4th rounder when he picked up his second win of the young 2023 season. Dallas’ five frames of scoreless, one-hit ball were just what the C’s needed as they snapped a five game losing streak.

Like Ohashi, Dallas has put together a very good month.

Zulueta Scuffling

While we’re looking at the first three starts of pitchers in the system, there has to be a little bit of concern among the player development staff about Yosver Zulueta’s last three times on the mound:

The cold northern temperatures probably didn’t help with the first two of those, and the Bisons appear to have brought some of that weather with them to Georgia, as the game time temperature in his most recent start was 54F (12C). Zulueta needed only 10 pitches to retire the side in order in the 1st, but then struggled with his fastball command through the next two frames. He left the game in the 3rd after sandwiching a pair of walks around a hard-hit single on a fastball down the middle, followed by a run-scoring single by former Jays farmhand Forrest Wall. Zulueta’s velocity was down on the night, his 4-seamer averaging just under 94. His pitches were….all over the place (only 19 of his 43 pitches were for strikes):

Statcast Chart

Is it time to be concerned about the right-hander, who seemed on the precipice of a big league bullpen spot before going on the IL last summer? Maybe not, but the velo dip is a concern, as is the command, which has always been an issue. Zulueta has been placed in Buffalo’s rotation this year to help make up for lost time - this is a guy who missed three years of development due to Tommy John, COVID, and a blown ACL. It’s not time to push the panic button just yet. Some warmer weather (let’s not forget, this is the first time he’s pitched above the Mason-Dixon Line in April, and some guys take longer to adjust than others) would help his grip, and hopefully his command. His fastball velocity is what gives his secondary pitches more bite, so that will be something to monitor as well. The player development folks have to be wondering if/when it’s time to move him to the bullpen, which is his likely ultimate destination anyway. It all just makes his next outing(s) that much more interesting to watch.

Ashley Stephenson

There have been so many articles written about the Blue Jays newest coach that I scarcely need to write a bio of her here. Instead, I thought I would share some of the conversation we had prior to a Canadians’ home game last month.

Stephenson is a decorated former player who began to move onto the instructional/managing side of the game as her career wound down. Blue Jays VP Joe Sheehan and Toronto native Liz Benn, the Mets’ farm director, urged Stephenson to attend several diversity conferences MLB put on, helping her to network and learn. The Blue Jays had previously invited her to work with prospects in Florida and were pleased with what they saw.

When the Blue Jays came calling with a job offer early in January, she had a decision to make. As a teacher with the Halton District School Board, she was sixteen years into her career (Stephenson teaches high school Phys Ed in Burlington), and half-way to collecting her pension. Any ON teacher will tell you that it’s hard to leave the profession at that point - that pot of gold when your combined years of teaching and age total 85 is hard to ignore. She took a leave from her position (truth be told, the profession hasn’t been the same in terms of student engagement since the start of the pandemic, at least in Ontario), and accepted. The Blue Jays offered her the choice of Vancouver and Dunedin, and even though her choice was on the other side of the country, she felt comfortable staying in Canada - at least for the time being.

I asked her how working with players likely unused to dealing with a female coach was going, and she pointed out that most of the guys on the team were just a year or two older than the high school kids she taught and coached in Burlington (most of the teams she coached were senior boys’). “They see me as a resource, ultimately,” she explained, “and they know if they want extra reps or instruction, that’s what I’m her for.” She certainly seemed comfortable and at ease in her new surroundings as we talked at The Nat in the hours before the C’s game that afternoon.

In the hours before yesterday’s Jays game with Seattle, I had a chance to talk to Sheehan about Ash. “Everything probably happened in about a week,” he recalled of her first joining the organization. “Liz Benn had mentioned her, and then one of our staff who works for us in amateur baseball sent me her resume.”

Sheehan reached out to Stephenson, and soon she had that summer invitation to the steamy reaches of the Complex League. “She was there for a week, and everything we saw kind of reinforced what he had been told. Ashley was good with the players, good with the staff, and everything just clicked, and so we followed up with her after the season and we were able to hire her and get her on board,” Sheehan added.

When asked what about her skill set impressed him the most, Sheehan replied, “just seeing her work with the FCL players and connecting with staff. And just like with any coach, there’s the experience aspect, how they deliver their knowledge. It’s one thing to talk to someone on the phone or Zoom and check references, but it’s another thing so see them doing it live.” So, the Florida experience was very much an audition for Stephenson - one she obviously passed.

Another impressive aspect to Stephenson is that in order to communicate more effectively with her players, she’s taking Spanish lessons twice a week, an impressive thing for someone who just turned 40.

One thing that marked the tenure of Gil Kim as farm director (before he joined the Jays coaching staff) was the number of new hires that had an education and/or strong post-graduate background. They really value staff who have extensive training and experience in an academic environment. While they seemed to have backed off from that trend a bit since Joe Sclafani took over from Kim, there still is an emphasis on education and instruction.

Come September, Stephenson’s leave will expire, and she likely will return to the classroom. If the Blue Jays come calling again, she’ll have another decision to make.

Juan Nunez

Nunez has been in the organization so long that I didn’t realize he had been out of it for several seasons.

Signed as an IFA in 2013 (the year Frankie Barreto was the highest-profile Jays signing), Nunez was very much an unheralded acquisition. The Blue Jays brought the Santo Domingo, DR native along slowly, not sending him stateside until late in the 2015 season with short-season Bluefield. He fared well in that Appy League stint, posting a 1.93 ERA in 14 IP over 8 outings.

Shoulder issues cost Nunez all of his 2016 season, and he was sent to (then) short-season Vancouver in 2017 to make up for lost time as a starter. Nunez repeated Vancouver the following season, and again in 2019 before spending most of the season with Low A Lansing, where, used exclusively in relief, he fanned 27 hitters in 21 innings, but gave up walks and contact to the tune of a 5.40 ERA. A Lansing source says Nunez was “a great guy, had terrific stuff, and no clue where it was going.”

Not surprisingly, Nunez - who had not pitched above Low in six seasons - filed for minor league free agency, and apparently found no takers. The cancelled 2020 season made that moot, and when 2021 started, Nunez was back home in the Dominican.

But Sheehan said that Nunez continued to work out, the club kept in touch with him, and we re-signed with the Jays for 2022, posting a 3.80 ERA in a career-high 30 innings, finishing with AA New Hampshire. Walks continued to plague him, as he fanned 31 in 42 IP. But, as Sheehan said, “he threw hard before, but not like this,” and Nunez fanned 60 hitters. He was used primarily as a one-inning high-octane guy, which has continued so far this year.

Nunez has started back with Vancouver this year to get some more innings, but he likely won’t be there for long, partially because of his age (27), and because with his 100 mph heaters, Northwest League hitters are overmatched against him:

Around the Nest

If you haven’t listened to this wrap of the goings-on in the Blue Jays farm system, you’re in for a treat. C’s media director and radio voice Tyler Zickel does an excellent job of hosting other broadcasters from around the organiztion, giving us all a window into who’s hot/who’s not in prospect land.

 Shout out to Zick for name-dropping me in the 2023 season opener.

Finally……..

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