Toronto Blue Jays Prospect Profile: Utility infielder Ryan McCarty
7 days ago
Today’s prospect has an interesting backstory.
With the Major League Baseball draft dropping to 20 rounds in 2021, it leads to a lot of talented players going undrafted. We’ve already covered an undrafted free agent, Devonte Brown, in this series.
However, the prospect we’re looking at today didn’t play for a sizable school like North Carolina State. In fact, he didn’t even play in NCAA’s Division I, or even Division II for that matter.
The prospect we’ll look at in this edition of the Toronto Blue Jays Prospect Profile is Ryan McCarty.
Getting to know Ryan McCarty
The Ryan McCarty Party never stops. However, the roots of the party started in 2018 with Penn State Abington, an NCAA division III school playing in the North Eastern Athletic Conference. McCarty spent five seasons at the school, slashing .437/.514/.785 with 42 homers throughout his collegiate career.
This included an insane .529/.591/1.164 slash line in his fifth and final season for the Nittany Lions. Yes, the 1.164 is the slugging category, as McCarty had a 1.755 OPS in his final season of college.
McCarty started his professional career in Single-A Dunedin, where he slashed .274/.378/.387 with a homer in 74 plate appearances, along with a 10.8 BB% and a 29.7 K% for a 124 wRC+. Combining his minor league and college totals, we can see that McCarty had one of the best hitting seasons of any player playing baseball in 2022.
His combined .424 batting average was tied for the 66th highest in baseball, including college, minor league, big league, independent, overseas and in Latin America. What’s more impressive is his slugging and on base plus slugging total. His .883 slugging percentage in 2022 was the seventh highest of any player, as was his OPS of 1.390.
Of course, McCarty’s insane numbers weren’t going to stick once he turned pro. The utility infielder slashed .244/.339/.449 with seven homers in 243 plate appearances with the D-Jays in 2023 for a 111 wRC+. He was called up to Vancouver, where he slashed .248/.369/.397 with three homers in 149 plate appearances for a 112 wRC+. Between the two levels, McCarty had a 12.2 BB% and a 24.2 K%.
Like the year prior, McCarty started at the level where he left off the previous season. With Vancouver in 2024, he slashed .248/.326/.400 with five homers in 187 plate appearances, along with 26 RBI for a 110 wRC+. Recently, the 25-year-old earned a call up to New Hampshire, where he has slashed .293/.341/.585 with three homers in 44 plate appearances for a 155 wRC+.
Between the two levels, McCarty is slashing .257/.328/.433 with eight homers (tied with Addison Barger for fifth) in 235 plate appearances. His 117 wRC+ is tied for ninth with Josh Kaseivch, slightly behind players like Orelvis Martinez (119), Alan Roden (121) and Barger (122).
Despite being an undrafted free agent out of a Division III school, McCarty has proven he can hit at every level he’s been at. Hopefully, that can continue in Double-A and beyond.
As always, you can follow me on Twitter @Ryley_L_D.
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