Future Blue Jays Newsletter

A few weeks back, I started a series of short essays about some top Blue Jays prospects. This is a continuation of that series.

Brandon Barriera

He took a unique approach to his draft year, shutting his high school season down just before postseason play in order to protect his draft status. On draft night in 2022, a surprising number of teams passed on the Florida phenom - who the scouting community had been following for several years - and Barriera fell to the Blue Jays with the 23rd overall pick.

“There will be a lot of teams who will regret this,” Barriera told Sportsnet’s Hazel Mae of the 22 teams who passed on him. It’s still very early in his career, but if Barriera has another season like the one that just passed, the Blue Jays might become the 23rd.

Generously listed at 6’2”/190, the knock on Barriera has never been about his pitches, but about his size, and how well his body would stand up to the rigours of starting. As a personal reference, I talked at length (thank you, Google Translate and Vancouver Canadians’ excellent play-by-play voice Tyler Zickel) with RHP Dahian Santos last April. I’m 5’8” (on a good day), and Santos, who is listed at 5’11”, stood barely an inch above me (he also, as my brother used to say, is so skinny he has to run around in the shower to get wet), so I’m thinking Brandon may have to stretch considerably to reach his listed height. At any rate, Barriera obviously took comments about his physique to heart, and came into spring training much bigger than he was only six months before.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t necessarily the good kind of bulk that he put on. The Athletic’s Keith Law bluntly said Barriera showed up to camp, “much heavier than expected,” and didn’t make his much-anticipated pro debut until the first week of May. But Barriera showed flashes of brilliance in that start, hitting 96 with his fastball, and getting whiffs on his slider.

The rest of Barriera’s season was decidedly mixed, however. Elbow issues, which delayed the start of his year, flared up and he spent time on the IL on two different occasions. In his last start on July 29th, Barriera could only hit just under 93 on the gun, and the slider lacked its usual bite. He lasted only 34 pitches in 2 IP before being shut down for the season.

As Blue Jays MiLB Pitching Development Coordinator Cory Popham said in my last newsletter, “it certainly wasn’t the season we or Brandon were anticipating.” Popham talked about Barriera rebuilding his body, which reinforces that the weight gains he made were not likely made in areas that would help his pitching stamina - it’s a bit disappointing that a first round pick has to change the shape of his body in only his second pro season. Which, of course, begs the question: why? What kind of work did he do? Did he receive some bad training advice? Did he focus more on weight gains, and not necessarily those associated with pitching, specifically lower body and flexibility work? It just seems odd, to be honest.

It seems the prospecting and scouting community has become quite divided about Barriera. Some point to that fastball/slider combo (the latter of which is already a plus pitch) as being the foundation of a back of the bullpen profile one day, while others question the body and the makeup. “He’s fat and I’m not sure the makeup is real great,” was an observation from a well-regarded prospect writer who spoke off the record. Maybe that’s a bit extreme, and the Blue Jays obviously felt differently on draft day (I really respect the work of Blue Jays Tampa-based scout Brandon Bishoff), but there have been many whispers along those lines.

2024 isn’t necessarily a make-or-break season for Barriera, but he has some missed development time to catch up on.

Fangraphs Top Prospects

Fangraphs came out with their usual excellent summary of the top prospects in the Blue Jays system. And to be honest, I quite like it.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is the ranking of 2023 1st round pick Arjun Nimmala at 3rd. Maybe it was because he was a first round prep pick who is still quite some distance away, and we don’t tend to get to see much of these guys until their second or third year of pro ball, but I admit that I have slept a bit on the Floridian prep product. He’s the ultimate high risk/high reward prospect, but there’s a considerable amount to dream on here.

Nimmala, quite simply, makes loud contact:

There is little doubt that he will outgrow SS and have to move to the right, and he will have to learn to lay off breaking pitches on the outer part of the plate. And the Florida State League, where he will begin next season, is not exactly hitter-friendly, but it will be interesting to get some eyes on him. Dunedin plays in Bradenton (at the moment one of only two teams that stream their FSL home games) the next-to-last week in May, so we’ll have to wait for a bit.

Some more interesting observations from Fangraphs’ list:

-SS Leo Jimenez ranks 5th, and given the state of the system, it’s hard to argue that. There will be questions about his bat, but he looks to be more of a solid defender, get-on-base/contact hitter.

-SS Josh Kasevich at 9 is……surprising. He has played solid defence, but given Fangraphs’ belief that he’s better suited to 3rd in the long run, his lack of pop doesn’t seem to auger well for that kind of move.

-OF Alan Roden has cracked numerous Top 10 lists, but he’s ranked 19th, his lack of power and marginal defensive skills being Fangraphs’ rationale. This might be a bit of a miss. He still will be a contact over power hitter, but he’s a better defender than people think, and I still think the power will come, in a Left Field sort of way.

-3B/1B Damiano Palmegiani is way down at 25. Fangraphs feels that he’s more of a mistake hitter, and he’ll see less cookies at the big league level, but this feels low for a guy who has produced all throughout the minors. Maybe we could quibble with where he’ll one day play, and he’s not the fastest guy in the world, but given that bat this feels like it’s on the low side.

-likewise, RHP Fernando Perez at 28 is a surprise. Yes, his secondaries are the biggest part of his arsenal, but as a 19 yr old who can already hit mid 90s with his fastball, it would seem like there’s considerable room for projection. I’m really looking forward to getting a look at him at some point this season.

Ohtani Over America

Look, while I - like so many others - wanted to believe, in hindsight there were certainly a lot of red flags about the most sought after free agent in baseball history supposedly on his way to Toronto.

While we saw tweets (or X’s, or whatever Elon is calling them) saying a private jet was scheduled to fly from SoCal to Toronto that day, or another saying Yusei Kukuchi had made a reservation for 50 at an upscale sushi place near the Dome, no reputable journalists (with the odd exception) dipped their toes in the online speculation waters. That’s mostly because no credible editor would allow such unverified information to be published. Twitter, in this day and age of clicks and pageviews, certainly is not a place of reliable information. It’s more of a correlation is causation kind of place.

In the aftermath, we all got sucked in. Even high-profile media figures (I hesitate to call them journalists) like Jon Morosi and JP Hoonstra went against what should have gone against their better judgment to tweet Ohtani to the Jays was a done deal. There isn’t always time in today’s warp speed media environment to fact check a source, but if ever there was a time to get it right as opposed to getting it first, this was clearly it.

Some have blamed the Blue Jays for not putting a halt to this bizarre LiveFlightRadar.com-fest, and leaking to a high profile media member that Ohtani was not, in fact, heading to Toronto, but…..that’s not really up to them. I have no doubt that the Blue Jays put together their best offer, and I’m certain that one day Mark Shapiro will tell us (in a roundabout, corporate way, as is his wont) what happened.

In a way, it was kind of fun. My 91 year old Dad suffered a minor stroke three weeks ago, and I was in the Alberta hospital helping care for him on the day the Ohtani “news” broke, and while Dad napped, refreshing Twitter for the latest updates helped to keep me occupied.

I could rant and rave about Jon Heyman’s unfortunate piece in which he basically dismissed Toronto as a small-market hockey city (two points that are incredibly erronueous), but let’s face it: we’re used to kind of thing. Less than half of America’s adult population owns a passport, and that as much as anything tends to produce a myopic view of the world. I wasn’t upset at his comments as much as I was, well, unsurprised. It was a reflection on him far more than it was on us.

Yes, this would have been a long way from home for Ohtani, but he would have owned this country. That’s his loss, not ours.

MLB Spring Breakout Series

Hey, this is actually a great idea.

MLB teams will host at least one 7-inning game between March 14-17th with a team full of their top prospects against a top prospect squad from a nearby MLB training site (Philadelphia and the Yankees are the closest teams, to my reckoning). The game will be part of a doubleheader between the big league clubs. One Florida and one Arizona team (yet to be announced) will host a second game during that time.

The rosters will be between 20 and 25 players; I suspect given that the timeline is very early in MiLB spring training, pitchers will be on pretty strict pitch counts.

Here’s my proposed Blue Jays lineup: