Intriguing Blue Jays pitching prospect gets bad news ahead of pivotal 2025 season

And the Jays thought they have gotten over their pitching injury woes already

Baltimore Orioles v Toronto Blue Jays
Baltimore Orioles v Toronto Blue Jays | Mark Blinch/GettyImages

There’s no doubt that the year 2024 turned out to be a nightmare for many of the Toronto Blue Jays' pitchers. In addition to witnessing many unexpected bouts of ineffectiveness, the Jays’ pitching core had their fair share of injuries over the course of the season as well.

To make matters worse, the injury curse wasn’t just happening at the major league level, as some of the Jays’ top pitching prospects also endured similar fates. Whether it was Alek Manoah, Jordan Romano, or all the way down to Ricky Tiedemann and Brandon Barriera, they all suffered ailments that unfortunately ended their seasons abruptly.

If you thought the Jays had finally gotten over that injury hex from last season, think again. It has now been recently learned that Blue Jays pitching prospect T.J. Brock has undergone Tommy John surgery and will miss the upcoming 2025 season, according to Blue Jays insider Scott Mitchell.

Intriguing Blue Jays pitching prospect gets bad news ahead of pivotal 2025 season

Brock was selected in the sixth round by Toronto back in the 2022 MLB Draft out of Ohio State University. Despite struggling a bit in his first couple of seasons of professional baseball in the Jays’ minor league system, he still managed to impress by posting a greater than 37% strikeout rate in the process.

More notably, Brock made some drastic improvements last year when he compiled a stellar 0.79 ERA, 0.88 WHIP and a whopping 20 strikeouts in just 11 1/3 innings pitched. Unfortunately, injuries limited him to just 11 appearances overall in 2024 split between the Jays’ affiliates in Dunedin, New Hampshire and the FCL.

Nevertheless, a healthy Brock came back with a vengeance to participate in the 2024 Arizona Fall League where he starred with the Scottsdale Scorpions. In seven relief appearances, the 25-year-old right hander was at his best, as he commandingly held his opponents scoreless on two hits with three walks and 11 strikeouts over seven innings of work.

As a result, with the recent promising growth and development in his game, Brock could have potentially been workable bullpen depth for the Blue Jays in the upcoming 2025 MLB season. Instead, he will now have a long road to recovery following his major surgery, much like his predecessors mentioned above. Nevertheless, hopefully Brock will be back stronger than ever once he regains full health by next season's midpoint.

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