Jays’ prospect pipeline about to get important influx of talent

TORONTO — Thanks to a pair of savvy one-year deals and the career years that followed for Marcus Semien and Robbie Ray, the Toronto Blue Jays are in an enviable spot heading into the 2022 MLB Draft.

When Sunday’s first round starts, the Jays and third-year scouting director Shane Farrell will have pick Nos. 23, 60, 77 and 78 — the latter two being the compensation picks the club received for Semien and Ray walking — to play with, allowing them to start restocking a farm system that’s been thinned out by trades and graduations.

While normally the Major League Baseball draft is an exercise in projection and extreme patience, there’s also a now element for the Jays and GM Ross Atkins.

With the MLB trade deadline set for Aug. 2, this draft haul is going to give the Blue Jays more leeway when it comes to packaging up prospects currently in the system for immediate help.

“All indications from preliminary discussions are that we have the depth and talent to be in play throughout the potential trade market,” Atkins said of initial trade talks. “Of course, we need to remain disciplined as we weigh those trade opportunities against how strongly we feel about the players in our system.”

At the top of the prospect pipeline sit a potential cornerstone catcher in Gabriel Moreno, a left side infielder with plenty of power — and strikeouts — in Orelvis Martinez and an emerging left-hander in Ricky Tiedemann, who Farrell and the Jays stole at pick No. 91 in last year’s draft.

Some intriguing names beyond that top trio include 2018 first-round pick Jordan Groshans, breakout outfielder Gabriel Martinez and right-handers Yosver Zulueta, Nick Frasso, Irv Carter, Sem Robberse and Dahian Santos.

Depending on the magnitude of the trade, teams often identify lower level names that may not appear on the surface to be obvious trade chips.

“We feel very good about the depth of our system, with a strong group of prospects whose names may be more recognizable,” Atkins said. “At the same time, we are excited about a number of development stories this year among lesser known prospects.”

Over the past calendar year, Atkins has traded away Farrell’s top choice in each draft, peddling 2020 fifth-overall pick Austin Martin in the Jose Berrios trade, and flipping 2021 first-rounder Gunnar Hoglund for Matt Chapman before the right-hander even through a pitch in a game for the organization.

“It's been great to see the additions help out with our with our major-league club,” Farrell laughed when asked if that’s offends him. “So it’s been fun.”

Heading into the draft, Farrell isn’t going to tip his hand. Ever.

“I don't think we would lock ourselves into one specific demographic or type of player,” Farrell said. "One of the hardest parts of the draft and difficulties in amateur scouting is you're dealing with a wide range of probabilities and ages throughout the draft. So comparing a high-school hitter to a college pitcher is a really difficult task. Weighing the probabilities certainly plays an important role into our decision making and it's mostly about alternatives with each pick.”

It’s always billed to be a best-player-available approach going in, and it is in the overwhelming majority of the selections.

But the Jays used nine of their first 10 picks on pitching last year, fully knowing the system needed an influx.

This year it could be a more balanced approach, with a damage-doing outfielder on the shopping list.

It doesn’t mean they’ll reach on a specific position or type of player, but everyone involved in the process is well aware of the system’s weaknesses.

Over the last couple of years, the Jays have started to tie Farrell’s amateur scouting department with the player development department led by Joe Sclafani.

Farrell’s team knows the players available best, but why pick the types of prospects that the organization struggles to develop?

“It’s one of the things since I’ve been here that we’ve been trying to collaborate on and really tighten things up between amateur and PD,” said Sclafani, who officially moved into the director of player development role earlier this year. “I talk with those guys a few times a year and they reach out to me and ask questions like what do we feel like we’re better at developing or what have we proven to be able to help guys with and what are the things that we’ve struggled with a little bit.

“I have a lot of respect for what they do. It’s hard to project kids, essentially, years down the line and know who’s going to be able to handle it mentally with the makeup. They’ve done a really nice job refining their own process and have been gracious enough to include us in a big way. They’re actively asking throughout the year but especially at this time when we’re trying to put our draft board together, ‘Is there a separator between these two players?’ Sometimes, that’s what it comes down to when the room is split. I think that’s where we can provide a little bit of value, but again Shane and his group have spent two years plus working with these guys and developing the relationships so we trust their gut but we just try to help out a little bit with what we think.”

If you scour the system, a couple things jump out.

The Jays have seemed to find success with upticks in pitcher velocity, while they’ve struggled in certain cases to help players add damage to their profile, with Groshans, who has just one home run in 58 Triple-A games this season, being the obvious case study.

They’ve also shown a tendency to select big-bodied pitchers who throw strikes, believing they can help with the aforementioned velo jump.

“Typically, if you break it down, we’ve been a bit more successful with athletes, good movers,” Sclafani said. “If you’ve got that good base and are athletic, typically our program has helped guys put on good weight and made them more powerful and more explosive and then you’ve seen the returns whether it’s velocity or exit velocity or just moving around in the infield or outfield as a good athlete.”

With the extra picks this year and five total picks in the top 100, the Jays are going to be busy early on.

The 20-round event features the first two rounds on Sunday night, followed by rounds 3-10 on Monday and rounds 11-20 on Tuesday.

While the draft is mostly a collection of names that fans will get to know over the years, one polarizing and potentially familiar name to monitor is former Vanderbilt right-hander Kumar Rocker, who didn’t sign with the New York Mets after being selected 10th overall last year.

With the window of contention at the big league level now wide open, many evaluators believe Rocker could be ready within a year if his shoulder is healthy.

They won’t draft for need, but there are definitely different wrinkles considered when a team is trying to win.

“Pitching is probably the best story we’ve had this year,” Sclafani noted. “We’ve had a few guys make huge strides and have put themselves in the conversation to be real major-league depth here in the not-too-distant future. We’ve got some infielders, so that’s still an area of strength. Catching has thinned a bit, but we’ve got some guys who are pretty far away that have some upside and outfield is getting there. We don’t have a ton of them, but we do like the upside in a few of the guys. Outfield is definitely an area where we could bolster things a little bit. We just don’t have too many guys who are knocking down the door. You try not to look at big league need, but if you look at our system, there’s opportunities.

“I think we can always continue to restock everywhere.”