Blue Jays: Top Prospect Named Player of the Month

The Toronto Blue Jays have an elite 19-year old prospect playing in Vancouver and he just won Player of the Month honours for the Low-A Southeast League while playing with the Dunedin Blue Jays.

At the MLB Trade Deadline, the Toronto Blue Jays traded their top positional prospect Austin Martin in part of a package to acquire Jose Berrios.  A big part of what made Martin expendable was the emergence of Orelvis Martinez.

The Dominican Republican native doesn’t turn 20 years old until this upcoming offseason, and he is not only showing he can hit for average, but he is already showing he has power behind his bat as he has collected 20 home runs so far on the season.

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Wednesday morning, the Dunedin Blue Jays announced that Martinez had won the monthly award for the Southeast League after leading the league in almost every offensive category, which included OPS (1.218), home runs (13) and RBI (31).  The award also comes in a month that saw him win Player of the Week twice, which came on back-to-back weeks.  This was the first time a player had won the award in repeating weeks in the league in four years when Colby Lusignan completed the milestone.

This past week Martinez was called-up to Single-A Vancouver to play for the Canadians, which is a league that he will be four years younger than the average age.  He made his debut Tuesday and he did not disappoint as he collected a home run in the fifth inning.

The Toronto organization signed Martinez back in the summer of 2018 as a 16 year old to a reported $3.5 million signing bonus.  Since the club moved both Simeon Woods-Richardson and Martin, Martinez was bumped up to the organization’s fourth best prospect and second top positional prospect on MLB Pipeline.

Martinez has played the majority of his minor league career at shortstop, but has seen about 25% of his time at third base.  If Martinez continues to keep trending upwards, you’ll likely start to hear overwhelming hype next season about when he will make his major league debut.  For now, we can sit back and enjoy seeing his progression.

With Jordan Groshans the only positional prospect rated higher than Martinez, who do you think will have a bigger impact on the organization?