System Overview
In last season’s System Overview, we noted the way this system skewed toward high-variance guys, and that largely remains true. The Jays have taken seven-figure shots on multiple high schoolers in each of the last several drafts, and Tiedemann was a junior college pick. All but a few of the prospects with “grades of impact” in the 40+ FV tier and above are volatile, high-variance players.
This system is stocked with meaningful redundancy, with plan As and plan Bs. There are pockets of players who are comparable in many ways layered throughout the org, perhaps as a way of mitigating the risk associated with those high-variance guys. You can see the trends in low-release height guys (Tiedemann, Barriera, Macko, Cooke and Juenger) and pervasive slider-first approaches to pitching (most effectively Brock and Cooke) in this system. Meanwhile, the bones of the position player group include bat-to-ball specialists with little power (Jimenez and Kasevich, among others) and power hitters with iffy defensive homes (Orelvis, Doughty, De Jesus, and Palmegiani).
Including the many players who recently graduated from rookie status (the likes of Davis Schneider, Nathan Lukes, and Otto Lopez), the Blue Jays should be able to stock their bench and reserve role group from within for the foreseeable future. Free agent departures, especially Matt Chapman’s, open up playing time at second and third base. We think Santiago Espinal, Jimenez, Barger and Martinez are more talented than both the OBP-driven Schenider/Cavan Biggio combo currently projected in the RosterResource starting lineup, and the contact/speed duo of Lopez and Ernie Clement. Schneider has already done enough in the big leagues to call him an unfortunate omission from last year’s list, but it looked like the book on him was out late in the season. There are so many possible permutations of this 2B/3B combo on the 40-man that the Jays should be able to backfill a lot of Chapman’s production from within.
