Blue Jays designate for assignment once-promising young top prospect

In the harsh reality of the baseball world, things could always change very quickly. You could be a prospering enigmatic young star one day and then suddenly be lost in the shuffle the very next day. That is exactly what has happened to former Toronto Blue Jays top prospect Orelvis Martinez.

On Thursday, Martinez was designated for assignment by the Blue Jays as Toronto needed a spot on the 40-man roster to activate pitcher Alek Manoah from the 60-day injured list. Manoah was subsequently assigned to the Jays’ Triple-A affiliate Buffalo following the move.

Blue Jays designate Orelvis Martinez for assignment

For Martinez, he was at one point in time one of the best power hitting prospects coming up from the Jays’ system. The once-promising 23-year-old infielder was ranked among the Blue Jays top 10 prospects in the organization since 2020 and in their top 5 between 2022 and 2024.

More significantly, Martinez was part of the MLB top 100 prospects in both 2022 and 2024 as well, according to MLB Pipeline. As a result, many had envisioned him to follow in the footsteps of the likes of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette to be the next big thing in the organization.

Martinez enjoyed a breakout minor league campaign in 2023 in which he batted .243 with an .835 OPS, along with 70 runs scored, 25 doubles, 28 home runs and 94 RBIs across 125 minor league games at Double-A and Triple-A, putting him on everyone's radar for a potential 2024 call up. While he did receive that call up and recorded his first major league hit in his MLB debut, Martinez would be suspended 80 games for violating Major League Baseball's performance-enhancing drug policy, just two days after his big league debut.

Since then he has completely regressed in play In particular for the 2025 season, Martinez has batted a career-worst .176 with a pedestrian .636 OPS, together with just 13 home runs and 32 RBIs over 99 games played with Buffalo. In fact, just prior to his DFA, he endured his worst month of the year in August, posting an abysmal .074 average, .416 OPS, along with just one home run and three RBIs in 18 total games of action.

With his power and offense practically being his main calling card, as his defense had been sub-par at best in his development to date, seeing Martinez struggle with his hitting now as well, ultimately diminished a lot of his value that he could provide to the organization. Therefore, that was likely what led to the Jays finally giving up on the once-upon-a-time can’t-miss prospect.