Jake Bloss continues to take positive strides forward while in the home stretch of his recovery from Tommy John surgery.

The Toronto Blue Jays’ pitching prospect — now 13 months removed from undergoing season-ending surgery in May 2025 — was back on a mound at Triple-A on Thursday for the first time since hitting the injured list last season. He made his return with the Buffalo Bisons and, outside of a shaky first inning, remained impressive in his post-TJ surgery form.

Bloss issued a leadoff walk to begin the top of the first before surrendering a two-run blast to the next Charlotte Knights (Chicago White Sox Triple-A affiliate) hitter, trailing 2-0 before recording an out. But the 24-year-old righty bounced back by striking out the next three — all via swinging strikes — to conclude the frame.

From there, it was smooth sailing for the former Houston Astros prospect, retiring nine of the final 10 batters he faced — 12 of 13 if you include his trio of strikeouts from the first inning — before exiting after the fourth inning. The only baserunner that reached safely against him after the top of the first came via a one-out walk in the fourth.

After throwing a season-high 65 pitches (39 strikes), Bloss’ seventh rehab start of the season came to an end, as the Bisons handed things over to their bullpen — which featured another rehab appearance from Yimi García, whose velocity ticked down again for the second time in his last three outings, in addition to allowing two runs on three hits without issuing any walks or strikeouts in two-thirds of an inning, spanning 16 pitches.

Bloss’ velocity, meanwhile, continues to hold extremely well. The recovering hurler has been throwing harder post-surgery and averaged 95.8 m.p.h. (97.3 max) on his four-seamer Thursday night. That’s almost two full ticks higher than his pre-injury ’25 average on that pitch.

But he’s displayed increased velocity on his other pitches, too, with his slider, curveball, changeup and sinker all outperforming last season’s averages.

The fact that Bloss’ stuff has improved considerably after TJ surgery — oftentimes it tends to be the other way around — speaks to the quality of Toronto’s player development staff, particularly on the pitching side. They’ve done an excellent job pumping out numerous success stories over the past few seasons, and Bloss appears to be adding to that list.

At this rate, the 2023 third-round selection — acquired by the Blue Jays in the ’24 Yusei Kikuchi trade with the Astros — is quickly trending towards becoming big-league rotation depth should another need arise this season. He’ll still need to continue building up as a starter and push his pitch count up closer to the 75-80 range. But he should be around there after another few Triple-A starts.

With Shane Bieber likely returning from his season-opening IL stint next week, Toronto’s rotation will soon return to a five-man staff, which is currently down to four after Max Scherzer landed back on the shelf earlier this week. The light at the end of the tunnel appears to be nearing. If this year has taught us anything, though, it’s that you can never truly have enough pitching.

Whether it’s as an injury replacement or eventually sliding into Patrick Corbin’s rotation spot, history would tell us that it’s only a matter of time until a major-league-calibre arm such as Bloss — who made three starts with Houston in ’24 before being dealt — is called upon later this season.

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