Future Blue Jays Newsletter

A very early look at the MLB draft, and some spring training updates as we edge ever closer to the start of real baseball.

2025 Draft Mocks Are Out

With college and high school baseball in full swing in more temperate places, mock drafts are popping up like crocuses in my wife’s garden.

One of the saving graces of the Blue Jays disastrous 2024 season was the promise of a reasonably high draft pick, and a chance to get the kind of elite player the farm system is thin on at the moment. Those hopes were dashed by the drop of the lottery balls last December, as well as the projections of this year’s crop by most respected evaluators. And given the year the farm system had, with it’s best pitcher sidelined by surgery and best position player suspended for a positive PED test, perhaps it was fitting. Still, the Blue Jays will have their highest pick since 2020, and with a new guy running the amateur scouting side, there will be no Austin Martins called when the 8th pick rolls around.

Keith Law of The Athletic says this year’s draft “has no standout prospect,” but has a deep and strong college pitching component. In his first mock draft, Law ranks Auburn C Ike Irish as the 8th pick, calling him “an advanced bat (with) high contact rates and solid-average power. While Irish has a plus arm, he’s split time between right field and behind the plate so far this spring, which likely drops his value.

A guy Law had at 10th intrigued me. Oklahoma HS SS Eli Willits checks a lot of boxes for the Blue Jays. He’s young (Willits won’t be 18 in December, and reclassified from the 2026 draft), plays a premium position, has high contact rates, and is the son of a former big leaguer. MLB Pipeline called him “Anthony Volpe with better physical tools at the same age.” Willits has dropped to the bottom third of the first round in Baseball America’s latest mock out this week. He seems more like an Arjun Nimmala pick - a young for his class player with lots of projection who will take time to develop, more suited to a team picking in the lower third of the draft.

Pipeline has Washington HS 3B Xavier Nayens ranked 8th in their most recent mock. Nayens has “long been seen as a potential elite hitter from the left side with an outstanding approach.” Some scouts were concerned about the uptick in swing-and-miss late last summer, while others just put if off to the youngster being gassed at the end of the season. BA has Nayens ranked 15th, lauding his good barrel control - “he can hit any pitch in the zone, he just hits everything,” according to a scout they consulted. At 6’4”, Nayens has arm strength plus, and is projected to stick at 3rd.

BA ranked Wake Forest CF Ethan Conrad in their latest mock. The scout ranking him said he is “very intrigued with (Conrad’s) extra base hit ability, and his ability to defend a premium position.”

The Blue Jays combined drafting and injury woes have left the system with few potential impact players this season. But there’s a very good chance one will be available when draft day comes around.

Spring Training Updates

I, like many of my fellow Canadians, am not spending time in Florida this month. To be honest, I had no plans, but given the current political climate, I prefer to spend my time and dollars north of the border. I will be heading to Buffalo early in the season, but I kind of regard the city as a suburb of Toronto. Plans to visit New Hampshire are officially on hold. I will make my usual pilgrimage to Vancouver, I’m just uncertain of the timeline.

So, while I’m not at the Blue Jays minor league complex, Sam Dykstra of MLB Pipeline and MLB.com was, and shared these updates:

There was considerable debate last spring, from what I was told, about Nimmala’s placement to start 2024. Certainly, he was overmatched in the early going, but I think he more than proved he’s ready for Vancouver with his second half. The Blue Jays don’t mind a player “getting punched in the face developmentally,” in the words of Farm Director Joe Sclafani. I’m not in Florida, but it what I’m seeing on my tv is any indication, let’s get Nimmala some time getting used to playing in Canada right away.

Something, anything would be good from Barriera. Let’s face it: one of the reasons this system is so lowly ranked is because they’ve had next to nothing from 2020 to 2023’s first rounders.

I liked this pick a lot. Keys certainly represented a departure from the contact-first approach the Jays had taken over the past few drafts. He impressed at Dunedin, and I’ll be watching him closely with Vancouver.

I asked Sam if he had anything else to add from his time in Dunedin:

I saw Khal Stephen throw in an intrasquad. Really good command in his first inning, coaches were starting to chirp about him. Left a hanging breaking ball to Cutter Coffey, who crushed it out to left-center. More promising about Coffey than a reason to be down about Stephen after the way the former performed after the trade.

Chances are, given the near-epidemic of UCL injuries suffered among pitching prospects last year, Stephen will be brought along slowly, likely starting in Dunedin until the Northwest League weather warms up