Vlad Jr. Graces the Cover Of Baseball America, Smashes Dingers, Makes Content Possible!

Would you look at that goddamned beautiful magazine cover!

Baseball America’s Ben Badler tweeted it on Monday morning, to the delight of Jays prospect-watchers who continued to be given more and more reason to be excited by their club’s big July 2nd 2015 signing. Last week BA named Guerrero the top prospect in the Jays’ system — a position befitting his terrific bloodlines (his uncle was former big leaguer Wilton Guerrero!) — and had all kinds of good things to say about him in their scouting report.

Better still was what John Manuel had to say in his Blue Jays prospect chat last Thursday, after the release of the their top 10 for the club — not just about Guerrero, but about the Jays’ system as a whole.

“I could see at least 6 Jays in the Top 100, down to Rowdy Tellez, and could see Bo Bichette and/or TJ Zeuch in as well,” he explains. Tellez, Zeuch, and Bichette rank six, seven, eight in the system, with Anthony Alford, Sean Reid-Foley, Conner Greene, and Richard Urena ranking between that group and Guerrero.

Still, it’s Guerrero who gets the real big praise, as Manuel says he’d give Vlad a slight edge on the Braves’ 2016 top signing, Venezuelan Kevin Maitan, who in June Badler called the best July 2 prospect since Miguel Sano. “I think Vlad Jr. has one of the highest ceilings in the minors because of his offensive profile; he could be pretty high on my personal Top 100,” Manuel says. “The bat’s going to play for Guerrero; I just have a high degree of certainty in his offensive profile. The only question scouts seem to have with him is the body. It’s not a reach to think of him as a future Edwin Encarnacion who gets to his peak sooner.”

He later notes that Pompey has lost his prospect eligibility, but that he would have made the top 10, noting that it “would have been a tough call on him vs. Tellez vs. Zeuch,” but that he still thinks he “could be their long-term CF option.”

But who cares about those old prospects??!? “Show me another 17-year-old with this much pop,” tweets 2080 Baseball’s Emily Waldon, as she tweets this drool-worth look at Guerrero taking some cuts:

Yep. That’ll do.

“Would Vlad Jr. go 1-1 this June?” asks our friend GROF, half seriously. And… I dunno. But that I’m not laughing at the suggestion seems like a pretty good sign for the future.