This article first appeared in Sportsnet Magazine’s MLB preview.
A year ago, "Pompey" was one of those names that you saw on the back of a jersey at the Toronto Blue Jays minor league complex and said, "Oh, that’s that guy…" They sew on those letters not just for the media or for the smattering of fans who show up to see the stars—and afterthoughts—of tomorrow, but for the people in the organization as well, who don’t necessarily know a prospect without a program.
Dalton Pompey was destined to start the 2014 season playing for the Jays’ high A-ball affiliate housed in the same Florida Auto Exchange Stadium where the big club comes together each spring. At age 21, the Mississauga native had been advancing through the system at just about the pace you’d expect from a 16th-round pick. His ceiling? To be determined. His likely arrival date in the big leagues, if that was indeed his destiny? A couple of years hence, minimum.
Things change.
Last September, having made stops in single-A, double-A and triple-A, Pompey was promoted to the Blue Jays and took the place of the injured Colby Rasmus in centre field. A little more than a month after their season ended, the Jays traded Anthony Gose, the leading candidate for the job following Rasmus’s departure as a free agent, to the Detroit Tigers. Pompey was playing in the developmental Arizona Fall League when the deal went down, and when he heard that the Jays’ manager John Gibbons had identified him during an interview as the team’s likely starter in 2015.
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By the time he got to spring training, the job was Pompey’s to lose, and he had become part of a larger trend. (Cue the headline writers: Youth Will Be Served; Blame It On Their Youth; etc., etc.) On the cusp of a season in which there is enormous pressure to contend, the Jays by choice and by necessity have opted to go with the kids.
Not just any kids—especially in the pitching department. Drew Hutchison, the relative greybeard at age 24, Aaron Sanchez, 22, and Daniel Norris 21, are all blue-chippers, and both Sanchez and Norris made the same unusual four-step leap to the big leagues that Pompey did last year. But for a fluke injury, they would be joined by Marcus Stroman (23), who started 2014 at triple-A Buffalo and was on his way to being named the team’s opening day starter at Yankee Stadium until he tore knee ligaments during a bunt drill and was lost for the season.
As spring training unfolded, two more names became part of the mix. Roberto Osuna, 20, has been a buzz guy in the organization since his signing. He was pitching against men in the Mexican League—roughly the equivalent of triple-A—as a 16-year-old, and might have flown through the system before now but for Tommy John surgery in 2013. And there was that very tall, very skinny Dominican kid throwing very hard and throwing strikes, Miguel Castro, 20, who hasn’t pitched above high-A ball. Those who watched the Vancouver Canadians at Nat Bailey Stadium last year know how good he is, but they couldn’t have anticipated seeing him move this far, this fast.
On St Patrick’s Day, the Jays sent both Osuna and Castro, who are all but inseparable off the field, to the mound in what sure seemed like an audition—a televised night game at Legends Field in Tampa against something pretty close to the New York Yankees’ opening-day line-up. They did just fine.
This is arguably the best collection of young arms to appear together as part of the same baseball generation in the history of the Jays—a tribute to the scouts and development people. (Add in a couple of those traded away, Noah Syndergaard and Justin Nicolino, and it is even more obvious that somebody was doing something right.)
It is with these guys and Pompey, fast-tracked to the big leagues, that this Blue Jays season will live or die. Sure, there’s loads of power in the middle of the lineup, and there are the elder statesmen of the rotation, Mark Buehrle and R.A. Dickey. But with the jobs of the manager and general manager on the line, a choice has been made to gamble that having been there before matters less than lights-out talent.
That should make for a fascinating, high-risk, high-reward baseball year. And though Jays fans understandably are more concerned about the present than the future following two decades without a playoff appearance, what lies beyond the horizon—including the payroll flexibility that young, controllable players bring—looks very bright indeed.