Ups and Downs on the Farm: April Edition

As you might be noticing, I’m trying a somewhat different format this year. It has not escaped my attention that the Blue Jays news and commentary sphere is increasingly saturated with daily highlights and reports on minor league players. I spent the winter mulling the way I’d been contributing to this was increasingly redundant. I was largely correlating a lot of stuff you already had an opportunity to know if you wanted to know it.

But the one thing I was doing that seemed less common was noting trends — who’s improving in performance, who’s falling off, and along the way who’s not trending either way but is a prominent enough prospect that readers might want to know what’s up with them. So that’s what I’m trying this season: a monthly review of how some notable players are trending for each team. It may or may not be somewhat less orderly than in the past. Still, going team by team, though, because it’s not complete chaos.

The Bisons have been a bit of an offensive juggernaut and most of the names you’ve heard about – but possibly not all.

Perhaps most prominently UP given his brief term with the Blue Jays is 3B/RF Addison Barger. In terms of trending, we need to remember that he had a difficult season for the Bisons last year, having never completely found his groove after an early-season injury. He earned his promotion with better slash numbers than ever in his career and walked virtually as much as he struck out. Seems to be answering any lingering doubts from 2023.

Another UP goes to, of course, Orelvis Martinez. It had been a trope in his career that he tends to start slow in a new year or at a new level. But the Jays’ top hitting prospect is defying that trend and is off to a monster start in April. He’s on a pace for 40 doubles and 40 homers (pro-rated to the number of at-bats he got last season when he hit 28 homers) but it’s pretty unlikely he’ll be down here long enough to do that.

Also earning an UP is on base machine Spencer Horwitz. He’s still not overcoming the lack of over-the-fence power, but it seems like a guy with a career .411 OBP should fit in on a major league roster somehow. Seems like a guy who might find himself in another organization after the trade deadline.

Reluctantly, I’m awarding a qualified DOWN to Will Robertson. “Oh” you might ask, “but I thought he had an OPS for April over .900?” which is true. The thing is, though, that all that value is packed into his first six games (.476/.542/1.238/1.780) – but since April 10 his line looks like this in 14 more April games: .105/.395/.211/.606 and even that is propped up entirely by managing 11 walks despite not hitting at all. Which is encouraging I guess. But as a guy who fell off the prospect radar before storming through the second half last year, he still has to prove himself, so there’s concern.

On the pitching side, you could award a modest UP to a couple of relievers but more for maintaining and establishing the trend they built last year. Hagen Danner and Mason Fluharty most notably. But there are some prominent DOWNS. Chad Dallas has struggled consistently and his 7.81 ERA is no illusion. Highly regarded reliever Connor Cooke has struggled to limit the free passes (one walk per inning in April) and has paid for it.

I’m going to go “incomplete” with Ricky Tiedemann, but it’s worth noting that he wasn’t dominating before the injury, mostly due to too many walks. we can’t know whether he was physically right, so we’ll have to wait and see how he comes back.

This paragraph will be a lot shorter than the one about Buffalo’s hitters.

There are only two guys here who came into the year generally ranked among the system’s Top 20 prospects, and I have positive things to say about each, but only one UP – and that goes to SS Josh Kasevich. Full disclosure: I’ve had a low view of this guy since he was drafted. He kept turning up in the top half of top 30 lists, occasionally in the Top 10 and I just… didn’t see it. Great glove, great bat-to-ball and almost zero power. How valuable could that profile be? I still have my doubts in that regard, but apparently, he can really hit. Through April he was rocking a .338 BA and largely carrying the offense. The SLG is a bit higher thanks to a better rate of doubles. I’m forced to tentatively revise my take on him upward a few spots.

The other player doing well here is OF Alan Roden. He started well and slowed a bit in the second half of April, but he’s, broadly speaking, looking a lot like he did after promotion last year. I can’t yet give him an up but he’s holding station and still has upside. Several other familiar names here are starting slow, but I wouldn’t judge any of them to have been so successful as to be given a DOWN rating for now.

I’ll lead off the pitching UPs with a guy that I don’t think is getting enough love, which is LHSP Trenton Wallace. He finished last season on the IL for several weeks but he shows no ill effects now, pitching better than he ever has. I’m not scouting enough to suppose whether he has the arsenal to start in the majors, but I wouldn’t be shocked if he has a Mayza-like outcome. He finished April with a 2.16 ERA and followed that up on Saturday with six no-hit innings.

The star pitcher here is LH Adam Macko. He finished really strong over his last seven outings in 2023 and continued to get good results in April, albeit with less dominance in terms of strikeouts and hits allowed. Put him down for a provisional UP since he’s at a new level now. RHP Michael Dominguez is carrying on a similar performance to what we saw after his promotion last year. It is not quite worthy of being designated UP, but it is worth noting.

The other guy I can’t help mentioning is my old pet project Eric Pardinho. I had such high hopes before he got to Vancouver. But after he missed almost all of two seasons with injury, the cool story of the bonus baby kid signed out of Brazil seemed to have gone sideways. In ’22 and ’23 the Northwest league regularly had their way with him. Now I have to be fair, he hasn’t even hit 10 IP yet but he’s facing better hitters in AA and isn’t showing the control issues which have bedeviled him. He’s getting guys out and striking guys out. And like Mulder, I WANT to believe. So… UP.

Probably the first guy one would expect to hear about from the Canadians’ lineup is OF Jace Bohrofen but I can’t really give him an up or down, he’s establishing himself as a guy who legit can get on base, which is a praiseworthy sign, but he hit seven homers in 77 at bats last year, and not a one in 55 so far this year.

No, let me give my UP to unheralded infielder Ryan McCarty. Playing almost entirely 3B his early trend, if it held, would put him in the “next Davis Schneider” discussion. The walk rate is down a tic, but somewhat more power and somewhat more aggressive running. Not a star in the making but a guy who’s at least trying to wedge himself into the conversation. For the most part, the rest of the offence here hasn’t been noteworthy. Dasan Brown is off to a better start than last year but it’s not good enough to make him a real prospect again yet. otherwise, meh.

The biggest UP among the pitchers has to go to RHSP Ryan Jennings. He showed well last season after a promotion to Vancouver before injury effectively ended his season in June, but he’s been even better to start this one apart from a tic higher walk rate. In four starts (including May 1) and sixteen IPs, he’s surrendered just one earned run. Beyond that, I’ll extend an UP to “non-prospect” reliever Grayson Thurman. At 25, he’s old for the level (indeed, a 25-year-old would be on the older side for AA), but he’s not in control of the overcrowded bullpens above him. Still, he’s doing his part to force it having yet to walk anyone, while striking out 16 in 11 IP.

I must also nod in the direction of Justin Kelly, another 25-year-old who should be in NH but I’d break the format to give him an up since he was just as good last year as he’s been in April, except that both the BB rate and (especially) the K rate are even better. His K/9 right now is 16. Both of these guys stand ready to move up when there’s space.

The one standout player on this team that’s earned an UP is OF Victor Arias. His BA is up over 100 points from last season, and his OPS is up over 130. Yes, of course, a one-month sample tells a limited story (which, ya know, a whole column, right?), but in a team loaded with less successful bats, including players who’ve been recognized as top prospects at some point in their career, he’s the one guy off and running.

If I’m fair, I have to hand out a DOWN here for CF Yhoangel Aponte. While he’s been noted as one to watch, so far, his power stroke is off, and that’s the main factor in diminished production. This isn’t me knocking him down the prospect list, just being fair with a slow start. To be clear, there are a lot of unimpressive lines for hitters here, but other than Arjan Nimmala, who had a very tiny sample last year, most all of them weren’t good hitters last year either, so I can’t pass out a down to anyone who has yet to be up.

On the pitching side, this is a tricky group. Fernando Perez has been quite impressive, but very much like he was last year for the Complex team. Connor O’Halloran has been impressive (and may soon need to be challenged with a promotion) but we have almost no sample from last year. Lefty reliever Kai Peterson is off to a hot start but he didn’t pitch in a professional game at all last year — “up” from what? Similarly, Landen Moroudis had everyone buzzing this spring after not being assigned to a team last summer, and he lived up to it until he got hurt. The best I co do with 10 innings is “incomplete.” The same applies on the other side. Irv Carter is still inconsistent, as he has been in the past. Brandon Barriera, you surely know, is hurt again (this time worse than before) and a lot of these guys don’t have professional innings last year as a baseline. In the months ahead we’ll at least have April to look back on as we seek to identify trends.

As an epilogue, the complex league had their opening day on Saturday. We know going in that Emmanuel Bonilla is the top prospect on the squad, but many others are virtual unknowns. I’d suggest Sam Shaw and David Guzman as a couple of others who might climb onto your radar.

More opinions in a month.