2014 Toronto Blue Jays Top 30 Prospects

Mandatory Credit: Jay Blue

It took us nearly four months to complete but the 2014 Toronto Blue Jays top prospects list is finally done. It was a grind (I’ll admit that I thought about giving up once or twice along the way) but the support we received from everyone was more than enough to make the entire project worthwhile in the end.

Below are the rankings and under each player’s name you can link to their full profile, which includes stats/analysis from 2013, a scouting report and our expected projection and/or outlook. You can also link to their 2013 profile (if we had one) under the previous rank column. Some of the previous ranks don’t match the linked article but that is because adjustments were made to the 2013 list after all of the off-season trades.

I have yet to see any official announcement about what the 2014 minor league assignments will look like (I know some players have been tweeting their destinations recently) so for now this is where I expect each player to be assigned. Asterisks are all over the place so I’ll add a bit more to those specific situations below the table.

I won’t ramble on too much more because this table was a nightmare for an HTML newbie like myself. However I hope this makes our list better organized and easier to access than the page we have that linked to all of the profiles before.

This is something I’ll eventually pin to the top of the site under the “Prospects” tab but for now I wanted to share the 2014 list in it’s entirety.

 
Honourable mentions (previous rank): Anthony Alford (10), Matt Boyd (NR), Emilio Guerrero (NR), Kenny Wilson (NR), Shane Dawson (NR) K.C. Hobson (NR)

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*Norris should start the season in the Florida State League at High-A with the Dunedin Blue Jays but if he’s successful could finish the season pitching in Double-A with the New Hampshire Fisher Cats

**Barreto is maybe the toughest to call but I expect he’s assigned to extended spring training before going to the Vancouver Canadians when their season opens in June. That would be a big leap for Barreto (the Northwest League mostly consists of college players) but I wouldn’t be shocked to see him succeed.

***Jimenez finished the season in Triple-A but was expected to start this season at Double-A so he could play every day (and get knuckleball practice from the now-released Tomo Ohka). He was officially optioned to New Hampshire but now that Erik Kratz has been called up, Jimenez could be bumped up to Buffalo.

****If Burns plays well he should finish the season at Triple-A if not the Toronto Blue Jays as a September call-up.

*****Nessy could repeat in Lansing and might not move up to High-A this season. That would be a disappointment but it’s not entirely out of the cards for the young catcher.

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A special thanks goes out to MLB Prospect Portal and Jay Blue for allowing us to use their pictures for this series. Hat tip to Jason Parks of Baseball Prospectus, Marc Hulet of FanGraphs, Clint Longenecker of Baseball America, Jim Callis and Bernie Pleskoff of MLBPipeline.com, Daniel Jarrett of MLB Prospect Portal, and many other people I am probably forgetting. Without the hard work of these folks this series wouldn’t have been possible. Thanks again to everyone.