Blue Jays Nation’s countdown of the top 20 Canadian baseball prospects continues with one of the two players to appear in the Major Leagues in 2024.

Hometown: Edmonton, Alberta

Organization: Cleveland Guardians

Position: Relief Pitcher

Acquired: Rule 5 Draft (Minor League phase) from San Diego

It’s not often that 27-year-old relief pitchers are considered top prospects. In fact – Erik Sabrowski has never appeared on MLB Pipeline’s Top 30 prospects lists throughout his career. Despite that, his impressive major league debut in 2024 and the fact that he maintained his rookie status heading into next season means he qualifies for this rankings article thread. The Edmonton native is one of two relief pitchers, one of two Guardians prospects, and one of two players hailing from Alberta to appear on this list.

Don’t let his age fool you; Sabrowski has elite stuff and is certainly one of the better Canadian pitching prospects making waves in the big leagues. Originally drafted by the San Diego Padres in the 14th round of the 2018 draft out of Cloud County Community College (KS), he wouldn’t make his pro debut for almost three full years. First, it was due to injury. He underwent Tommy John surgery shortly after being drafted, which caused him to miss the entire 2019 season. The pandemic cancellation of the 2020 campaign meant he wouldn’t step on a professional mound until June 13th, 2021. He amassed a 1.86 ERA and 12.7 K/9 across 29.0 high-A innings.

His brief success in 2021 led to Sabrowski’s selection in the minor league phase of the Rule 5 Draft by Cleveland shortly after. Unlike the major league phase, the claiming team is not required to keep the player at a certain level during the season. This ended up being an important caveat in the case of Sabrowski, who underwent a second Tommy John surgery and missed the entire 2022 season.

A return to health in 2023 led to a solid performance across 21 2/3 double-A innings (2.49 ERA, 11.6 K/9), as well as in the Arizona Fall League (1.86 ERA, 14.9 K/9). However, walks were an issue at both stops, walking a total of 28 batters across his 31 1/3 innings.

Despite missing three full seasons since being drafted, Sabrowski did his best to make up for lost time in 2024. He was phenomenal to start the season in double-A, engineering a 0.77 ERA, an otherworldly 20.1 K/9, and just 1.5 BB/9 across 11 2/3 innings. That success earned him a quick call-up to triple-A Columbus in May, where he spent the majority of the season. The strikeout numbers remained elite in Columbus (12.9 K/9) but his control issues held him back from dominating (7.3 BB/9).

Despite the elevated 4.38 ERA and 1.70 WHIP, the Guardians called him up to the Major Leagues on August 28th. Pitching under the bright lights seemed to allow the lefthander to wrangle in his control and blossom into a lights-out bullpen arm. He pitched in eight regular season games, striking out 19 in 12 2/3 innings while not allowing a run during the entire stretch.

Sabrowski was an important part of the Guardians’ postseason bullpen, appearing in five games across the Wild Card and Divisional series. He allowed just one run across 5 1/3 innings, striking out eight while walking three.

Despite his long road to the Major Leagues, Sabrowski has the makings of a high-leverage reliever for years to come. Despite his fastball sitting at 92-93 mph, it’s a high spin offering that misses a lot of bats and induces weak contact. He threw the heater 58% of the time in 2024, mixing in a curveball (26%) and slider (17%). He creates a ton of movement on both his off-speed pitches, generating swings and misses that lead to his eye-popping strikeout numbers.

His elite strikeout stuff (13.5 career K/9) is similar to the kind of numbers that fellow Canadian reliever Cade Smith produced in the minor leagues, a guy who ended up amassing the highest fWAR (2.7) in the majors last season. The left-handed Sabrowski will have a chance to form a formidable duo in the back end of the Guardians bullpen with the right-handed Smith, with elite closer Emmanuel Clase shutting the door in the 9th. It’s an embarrassment of riches for a bullpen that produced the 4th lowest ERA (2.57) in the Wild Card era last season.

The one thing to watch for Sabrowski will be whether he can keep his walk totals down, similar to when he joined the Guardians last year. His struggles with command in triple-A may translate across a bigger sample size with Cleveland but how consistently he can stay around the strike zone will ultimately dictate how successful of a pitcher he becomes.

Sabrowski is positioned to not only win a bullpen role with the Guardians out of spring training but also push for high-leverage work early on. He will likely join the likes of Smith and Matt Brash (and perhaps #13 prospect Eric Cerantola) as Canadian high-leverage big league relievers next season. If all of them decide to participate, Team Canada’s bullpen for the 2026 World Baseball Classic could be an incredible unit.

12. Damiano Palmegiani

13. Eric Cerantola

14. Dasan Brown

15. Émilien Pitre

16. Adam Maier

17. Liam Hicks

18. David McCabe

19. Calvin Ziegler

20. Jeremy Pilon