Blue Jays' future sustainability hinges on finding talent late in draft

Major League BaseballCommissioner Rob Manfred speaks during the 2016 MLB Draft. (Julio Cortez/AP)

[exclusive]TORONTO – Planting the seeds of future sustainability gets harder from here on out for the Toronto Blue Jays, who are drafting 19th this year after picking fifth overall last summer and hope to keep moving backwards, rather than forwards in the years to come.

To that end how effectively the club’s amateur scouting department, led by director Shane Farrell, can find top talent in the bottom third of each round will help determine how long the current competitive window runs.

As things stand, the Blue Jays are positioned well at the big-league level with a young core featuring Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette, Teoscar Hernandez, Lourdes Gurriel Jr., Cavan Biggio and Alek Manoah. Last year’s first-rounder Austin Martin headlines a strong next wave currently at double-A New Hampshire that also includes Gabriel Moreno, Jordan Groshans and Simeon Woods Richardson, among others.

There’s potential impact lower down the system in the likes of Adam Kloffenstein, C.J. Van Eyk, Eric Pardinho and Orelvis Martinez. But attrition will funnel many of them out and to avoid the type of cliff the Chicago Cubs are now heading towards will require identifying talents other teams missed.

“I know it's all of our hope that we're picking even further behind pick 19 for years to come,” Farrell said during a Zoom chat with media Thursday. “It’s challenging, obviously, the deeper you pick each round. But you can look at organizations like the Dodgers who have had a lot of success picking deep. They've done a tremendous job in their amateur draft led by Billy Gasparino. The important thing as we start to pick deeper and deeper in the draft is just coming into each draft and each round with an open mind and not getting too specific on what you're looking for and recognizing that baseball players are coming in all areas, with all different backgrounds. We have to be open to that and not be too fixated on one demographic.”

The same goes for approach and risk tolerance, two other areas where the Blue Jays under GM Ross Atkins and president and CEO Mark Shapiro have tended to show balance.

Since 2016, the club’s first draft under the current regime, the Blue Jays have had six first-round picks and taken a college player with five of them – Groshans the lone exception in 2018. Still, they’ve also taken higher upside prep-schooler swings beyond that, most notably nabbing Bo Bichette in the second round, 66th overall, in 2016.

Hagen Danner, a pitcher at single-A Vancouver originally selected as a catcher, was a second rounder in 2017. Kloffenstein was a third-rounder behind Magnolia High school teammate Groshans in ’18. Kendall Williams (traded to the Dodgers in the Ross Stripling deal) and Dasan Brown followed Manoah in ’19, while the Blue Jays used all five picks on collegians last year.

Broadly speaking, college players tend to offer more certainty but less upside, while prep schoolers are more volatile but usually have higher ceilings. Assuming the Blue Jays’ draft slot keeps getting pushed further back, they may be forced to decide between chasing upside or opting for stability.

“I don't think you should ever walk into a draft with a fixed mind on what specifically you're looking for in terms of in terms of risk,” said Farrell, “because the player order is going to change as the draft is going on and a player may fall to you that you're not expecting, or something like that. And sometimes (the approach) has to do with the health of your organization, the current prospects that you have, that that may help determine that.”

Hence, the front office’s careful hoarding of prospects in the face of temptation to leverage one of the deeper farm systems in baseball to augment the big-league club. Here, the Dodgers are once again the model, as not only do a good job of finding top talent deep in the first round (Corey Seager at No. 18; Walker Buehler at No. 24; Will Smith at No. 32; Gavin Lux at No. 20), they also carefully manage their prospect capital, mitigating their vulnerability to a collapse.

The Cubs are on the brink right now after trading away prospects like Eloy Jimenez and Gleyber Torres in win-now deals. The Blue Jays were in a similar spot after the post-season runs of 2015-16, with an aging roster and a farm system in need of a bridge to Guerrero and company.

They’re back in a competitive window and expect the front office to act more like the Dodgers than the Cubs, even if they’re positioned more similarly to the San Diego Padres of the past couple years. Now that the Blue Jays are also players in free agency, significant signings like that of George Springer will cost them a draft pick and adding the star outfielder means this year they won’t have a selection in the second round.

The impact there isn’t only the loss of a pick but also the cut in the signing bonus pool, limiting their ability to move money around and pay a player who may have slid into their range.

“We’re definitely open to looking at various ways to use our bonus pool,” said Farrell, but at $5,775,900, he’ll have the third smallest tally to work from. The Pirates and Twins, in contrast, both have more than $14 million to spread around.

All of that makes this draft, and likely the ones to come, all the more challenging for the Blue Jays. While the process this year will be far more normal than a year ago – Farrell and staff are gathered at the Player Development Complex in Dunedin, Fla., after conducting things virtually last summer – they have far less control picking at No. 19 instead of No. 5.

“That's what makes the draft so exciting,” said Farrell. “We’ll line up the players the best we can and use all the information that we have to place them in that order and as the draft starts to fall and players come off the board, the information's going to keep changing. Just staying true to the process and what we've done in the week or 10 days leading up to the draft to kind of ease or calm some of those nerves to help us make the best decision possible is what we'll do. It's challenging at times, but it's a lot of fun and exciting in the moment. This year we're definitely casting a wider net in terms of who we think will be available at our pick. So it'll be a bit more reactionary ... this year with more picks being in front of where we are.”

The Blue Jays would like nothing more than to make picking late in the draft a habit. But if they’re going to sustain the big-league club over an extended period, they’ll have to be real good at it, too.

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