Six interesting Blue Jays prospects to watch in the Spring Breakout game

DUNEDIN, Fla. — Prospects from throughout the Toronto Blue Jays organization will welcome their Minnesota Twins counterparts to TD Ballpark on Saturday as part of this year’s MLB Spring Breakout series. You can watch Sportsnet’s broadcast of the game on Sportsnet+ at 1 p.m. ET.

Right-hander Jake Bloss will start for the Blue Jays and be followed by Trey Yesavage, Kendrys Rojas, and Mason Fluharty. Here’s how manager Brent Lavallee — who will helm the double-A New Hampshire Fisher Cats this season — is deploying his starting lineup:

1. Jace Bohrofen — DH
2. Arjun Nimmala — SS
3. Alan Roden — RF
4. Orelvis Martinez — 2B
5. Charles McAdoo — 1B
6. RJ Schreck — LF
7. Sean Keys — 3B
8. Dasan Brown — CF
9. Jacob Sharp — C

About midway through the game, you’ll see a full line change as the following wave of Blue Jays prospects come off the bench to play the final few innings:

1. Aaron Parker — DH
2. Jay Harry — SS
3. Yohendrick Pinango — RF
4. Eddinson Paulino — 2B
5. Peyton Williams — 1B
6. Victor Arias — LF
7. Cutter Coffey — 3B
8. Enmanuel Bonilla — CF
9. Brock Tibbitts — C

Many of these players could make their MLB debuts within the next one-to-three seasons. Some — such as the ever-improving Alan Roden and the athletically gifted Charles McAdoo — have already made strong impressions in big-league camp this spring.

With the majority of Toronto’s major-league roster set to hit free agency within the next two years, Saturday offers an early glimpse at some of the players who could help backfill those vacancies. Here are six interesting prospects who will appear in the game that you might be seeing at Rogers Centre someday soon.

Yesavage is scheduled to make his professional debut in relief during Saturday’s game, which will give fans their first look at the advanced, big-league ready stuff the Blue Jays were eager to acquire when the East Carolina product fell to them in last July’s draft.

A six-foot-four, 225-pound right-hander, Yesavage was expected by many to go somewhere in the No. 10-15 range on draft night. But the Blue Jays were able to capitalize on him at No. 20 after some teams were scared off by a partially collapsed lung suffered while receiving dry needling treatment in May on the eve of the AAC Championship Tournament.

Toronto didn’t share that same level of concern, particularly after Yesavage returned to the mound less than two weeks later and threw 7.1 one-hit, one-run innings against Wake Forest in the NCAA Regionals. That capped a year in which the 21-year-old ranked top five among all Div. 1 starters with a 2.02 ERA, 40.4 per cent strikeout rate, and .154 batting average against.

Yesavage leans on a three-pitch mix: fastball, slider, splitter. He’s toyed with a curveball for years but still considers it a work in progress. What the Blue Jays like most is how unique his riding fastball is, coming in at 93-95 m.p.h. — with the ability to touch the high-90s when needed — from an unusually high release point that gives his pitches a great amount of downward plane.

What they like just as much is his innings base after Yesavage threw 93.1 in his final NCAA season. That workload capacity is highly coveted by a Blue Jays baseball operations department that’s been aggressive in going after established pitchers with similar ability such as Jose Berrios, Chris Bassitt and Kevin Gausman. Provided his monitoring data and stuff hold up, the club will aim to extend Yesavage to 120-125 innings this season.

Yesavage could begin that quest as high as double-A thanks to the quality of his arsenal and how polished he is. Another possibility is keeping him in Florida through April, avoiding the New Hampshire cold while preserving innings in case they’re needed later this year — either for a major-league post-season push or at the Arizona Fall League.

The Blue Jays knew they were in for a slow burn developmentally when they signed Rojas in 2020 as a lifelong outfielder who’d moved to the mound only months prior. But they saw a projectable frame and athletic delivery that they felt could grow into a quality left-handed starter with some deception from a lower arm slot.

A series of injuries — at least partly the result of inconsistent commitment to the off-season and between-outing physical routines all successful starters must master — have made the rise even slower and limited Rojas to no more than 84 innings pitched in a single season. But 2024 was an encouraging step as Rojas displayed increased velocity on both his mid-90s riding fastball and mid-80s slider.

A deceptive changeup rounds out the Cuban’s mix and has produced above-average swinging strike rates throughout his minor-league career. If the 22-year-old can continue using all three pitches as effectively in double-A this year as he did at high-A last year (Rojas had four starts with nine or more strikeouts in the back half of the season), and even add another mile or two per hour to his heater, he’ll quickly push his way into the upper tier of starting pitching prospects in the organization.

If the Blue Jays need a turnkey bullpen lefty at any point in 2025, Fluharty’s the guy. He was excellent at triple-A Buffalo last season outside of a stretch from the end of July through mid-August when he hit a wall while withstanding the heaviest workload of his career. He got things back on track in September and struck out 38 per cent of the hitters he faced over his final 10 outings while working to a 1.59 ERA.

Fluharty throws only two pitches — a low-90s cutter and mid-80s slider — but he hides the ball exceptionally well and has a funky, low slot, crossfire delivery that makes hitters uncomfortable. He’s taken strides with his command over the last two years and his biggest focus this spring has been executing fastballs on either side of the plate.

Multiple attempts to develop an arm-side offering have been abandoned as pronation doesn’t come naturally in Fluharty’s unique delivery. How problematic that will be against right-handed hitting at the next level remains to be seen. For now, Fluharty says his approach against righties is to either bust them up-and-in and break their bat or pick the outside corner at their knees.

Working up-and-in and down-and-away to righties gives Fluharty better miss patterns and avoids leaving pitches in the danger zone over the heart of the plate. Of course, that puts extra emphasis on him continuing to maintain his improved command, which wasn’t an issue last season as he kept his walk rate against righties below seven per cent.

Keep doing that and the 23-year-old will almost certainly be in the big-leagues at some point this season when bullpen injuries, underperformance or overuse inevitably occur.

Entering spring training last year, the Blue Jays were planning to start Nimmala — then only 18 and entering his first full professional season — in the Florida Complex League. But the 2023 first-rounder showed up for camp in such good shape, and impressed so thoroughly on minor-league backfields, that the club scrapped its plan and opted to challenge him with an aggressive assignment to the Florida State League, where the average player was nearly three years older than him.

The .167/.280/.306 start Nimmala got out to — with a 34.4 per cent strikeout rate — demonstrates what a considerable challenge it was. At that point, five weeks into his season, the Blue Jays pulled Nimmala out of competition, placed him on the development list, and gave him a three-week breather at the club’s player development complex to work on some things. And after correcting postural and timing issues, Nimmala got another crack at A-ball pitchers in late June.

He homered in his first game back and finished the year on an .895 OPS tear with 32 extra-base hits over his final 53 games. He tied for fourth in the league in homers despite missing over a third of the season. And even during his rough April, Blue Jays coaches were impressed with Nimmala’s uncommonly mature ability to not let offensive struggles bleed into his defensive play.

Back for 2025 following a typically productive winter in which he put on 15 pounds, Nimmala is entering his second professional season as confident and composed as ever. The 19-year-old could start 2025 in high-A Vancouver after being brought over to major-league camp for a handful of appearances this spring, including one in which he hit a moonshot off Yohan Ramirez:

It’s swings like those that lead Blue Jays people to call Nimmala the most talented minor-leaguer they’ve had since Bo Bichette and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. His exit velocities are already in the 110-112 m.p.h. range with room to grow as he continues to mature. There’s no questioning his throwing arm, and he hasn’t lost a step defensively as he’s put on weight.

Focuses this year will include game planning and overall approach as the Blue Jays seek to give Nimmala more ways to produce as he climbs the ladder and gets fewer mistakes to punish. If he can carry over the performance from his final two months of 2024 into 2025, he’ll unquestionably be the organization’s top prospect before his 20th birthday in October. If he isn’t already.

When the Blue Jays discovered Arias at a 2018 workout in Venezuela, he was lean and on the smaller side of the outfielders he was showcasing alongside. Seven years later, he’d still fit in better amongst the catchers at five-foot-nine. But no one’s calling him lean anymore — “jacked” is more appropriate.

Arias has put on slabs of muscle since joining the Blue Jays, the result of a tenacious, determined on-field demeanor transferring over into the weight room. It’s part of the reason why the left-handed hitter was slugging .454 with a league-leading .839 OPS in the Florida State League — the toughest offensive environment in all of minor-league baseball — late last July upon his promotion to the Vancouver Canadians.

Arias got only 11 games in at high-A before an injury ended his season, but he still hit .324/.425/.353 in that small-sample span. And the 113.4-m.p.h. max exit velocity he posted in Dunedin tells you all you need to know about what he can do when he gets ahold of one. That’s a number that would rank within MLB’s 77th percentile. And the 21-year-old Arias may not be finished adding strength.

Meanwhile, the 11.3 per cent walk rate Arias produced in his breakout 2024 is reflective of the discipline he’s displayed throughout his minor-league career. And he moves well for his size, which has allowed him to put up double-digit steals each of the last two seasons.

The Blue Jays believe Arias has a chance to play all three outfield spots in the future, and he’ll continue to see plenty of work in centre back in Vancouver this year. Produce another season like the one he just had and Arias could give the Blue Jays a difficult 40-man roster decision to make ahead of next winter’s Rule 5 draft.

Part of the return for Danny Jansen at the 2024 trade deadline, Coffey’s impressively athletic considering his size. The 20-year-old’s still listed at the six-foot-one, 190 pounds he was when he entered pro ball as a teenager; but he’s more realistically six-foot-three and over 200 pounds at this point with more bulk potentially to come. Despite the stature, the Blue Jays believe Coffey moves well enough to stick at shortstop, and he certainly has the arm for it. But he’s also played plenty of third base if that’s his eventual home.

The big arm is why Coffey nearly entered the 2022 draft as a pitcher thanks to his low-to-mid 90s sinking fastball and a solid slider he could land for strikes. But his strength and bat speed took off as a high school senior and have carried over to the pros where he slugged .414 with 15 homers last season at high-A. His raw power is obvious but work remains to be done on his selectivity and tendency to chase.

Coffey will likely always have a good amount of swing-and-miss to his game. But if the Blue Jays can help him make more contact, he has the size and strength to be a power threat in the big-leagues. Particularly if he can maintain the double-digit walk rates he’s run at each level since turning pro.