Blue Jays amateur scouting director leaving for the Detroit Tigers

According to Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame inductee Bob Elliot, Editor in Chief of the Canadian Baseball Network, Toronto Blue Jays director of amateur scouting Shane Farrell is in the process of leaving the organisation to join the Detroit Tigers. It looks as though he’s taking over for Ryan Garko, who’s still listed as the Tigers VP of player development, but was promoted to an assistant GM role back in May.

Detroit sports reporter Chris McCosky noted on X that the deal was not finalized just yet, but things seem to be trending in that direction.

Farrell was hired by Toronto in January 2020 and has overseen five amateur drafts. As Elliot also noted on X, Farrell will be reunited with Tigers president of baseball operations Scott Harris and general manger Jeff Greenberg. The three had previously worked together when Harris was Chicago’s director of baseball operations and Farrell was a scout and crosschecker with the Cubs.

As Mark Polishuk of MLBTR notes, there is also a family connection to Detroit for Farrell, as his father John, the former Blue Jays (2011~2012) and Red Sox (2013~2017) manager, spent the final season of an 8-year MLB career as a pitcher with the Tigers in 1996.

The Blue Jays actually drafted Shane as a RHP out of Marshall University in the 46th round of the 2011 amateur draft, but he never played professionally. He was later hired to work as a scouting assistant for the Cubs in their baseball operations department. His brothers Luke and Jeremy were also MLB draft picks, and his grandfather Tom played three seasons for Cleveland.

Farrell leaves Toronto with a mixed, or perhaps incomplete record. Of his five first round picks, Austin Martin (5th overall in 2020) is the only player so far to reach the big leagues, where he posted a -1.0 bWAR and .670 OPS in 93 games and 257 plate appearances for the Minnesota Twins this year. Of course, Martin was moved at the July 2021 Trade Deadline along with RHP Simeon Woods Richardson for current Blue Jays starter José Berríos.

Top 2021 draft pick Gunnar Hoglund was flipped in a March 2022 trade package to the Oakland Athletics in the Matt Chapman trade. He posted a 9-4 record with a 2.84 ERA in 104.2 innings as a 24-year-old this year for Oakland’s Double-A affiliate, the Midland RockHounds.

A number of top pitching prospects drafted under Farrell have struggled with injuries. 2023 1st rounder Brandon Barriera, 3rd rounder Ricky Tiedemann, and 4th rounder Landen Maroudis all underwent UCL surgeries this year, as did 2021 4th rounder Chad Dallas and 2022 12th rounder Nolan Perry.

Perhaps the best draft picks under Farrell will be remembered as No. 5 ranked 19-year-old shortstop Arjun Nimmala, taken 20th overall last year, and soon to be 25-year-old outfielder Alan Roden, taken in the 3rd round in 2022 and ranked No. 12 by MLB Pipeline.

His final top pick for Toronto this year was RHP Trey Yesavage out of East Carolina University with the 20th overall pick. Yesavage is already ranked as the Blue Jays No. 1 prospect per MLB Pipeline despite not pitching professionally this season after he was drafted.

Other top prospects drafted under Farrell include No. 9 ranked, 23-year-old SS Josh Kasevich, who was drafted in the 2nd round in 2022 and made it to Triple-A Buffalo this year, as well as 2024 2nd rounder Khal Stephen, who MLB Pipeline already ranks as Toronto’s No. 6 prospect.

With Barriera rehabbing from Tommy John surgery, Nimmala and Yesavage will be the only 1st round draft picks drafted under Farrell active in the organisation in 2025 given his first two top picks were traded away. We won’t know the impact of his drafts at the big league level for another few years as players work their way up the ranks, as well as rehab from structural arm injuries.

As Ben Nicholson-Smith noted this past July, over the past seven seasons, Toronto’s draft WAR has been ranked bottom third in MLB: “they rank 21st among the 30 teams in WAR drafted since 2017 with 11.0, right between the White Sox and the Marlins (all numbers through July 5, 2024).”

Farrell is only responsible for that since 2020, and as he noted in the BNS article, “It'd be difficult to give any sort of grade. We're always learning and evolving from each draft class. There's things we've done well, and I'm sure there are things we could improve upon (or) that we have improved on. I think where we have been successful is supplying the organization with picks that have impacted our major-league team, whether they're playing in our uniforms or they've allowed us to go out and acquire guys like Matt Chapman or (José) Berríos and push us into the playoffs."