The 12 Days of Prospects

 Doughty's contact skills and feel for the game give him a chance to play above his tools and become a solid, if unspectacular, everyday second baseman in the major leagues.

-Baseball America, in ranking Doughty the Blue Jays 8th top prospect

The Florida State League is only a few hours away by plane from the wilds of Eastern Canada, but for those doing their prospecting online in this Covid and high fuel prices era, it might as well be on another planet. But the reports we got late this summer on Cade Doughty, the Blue Jays 2nd round comp pick from LSU, gave a glimpse into this potential sleeper.

The owner only of a top-grade contact tool, if one read the scouting reports, Doughty smacked a half dozen round trippers in 106 ABs after joining the D-Jays and helping to propel them to a post-season berth. His exit velos may be on the pedestrian side, but there is no doubt about his bat-to-ball skills, or his ability to get to his barrel. To wit:

In the batter’s box, Doughty is all business. From an upright closed stance with smooth, clean mechanics, he uses elite pitch recognition to judge spin and location, seldom chasing as a result. He squared up Low A pitching quite regularly; as a guy from a major college program, pitchers at that level were probably overmatched agsint him. It will be interesting to see how he fares at the next level.

All Doughty seems to do is hit. Add to that a high baseball IQ, and you have an interesting prospect moving forward. Reports peg him as a 2nd baseman, but he split time between the keystone and the hot corner in his brief pro debut (and a brief sample of his play showed he’s at least an average defender), and Blue Jays Director of Player Development leaned toward Doughty at the latter position in a conversation in October. There is absolutely no question about the bat: it will definitely play.