4 Blue Jays prospects with the most to gain in 2024

For the past season, many of the up and coming prospects of the Toronto Blue Jays worked hard in growing and developing their game in preparation for the major leagues. Their main goal was to make level advances in the minor league system to ultimately make the days of reaching the big leagues that much shorter. At the same time, the Blue Jays currently have certain needs that they need to address both their big league club, as well as their organizational depth as a whole in order to maintain success in the near future.

Consequently, which potential Blue Jays prospects could have the most to gain in 2024? Here, we take a look at four players that could be seeing some big time action sooner rather than later.

Alan Roden

The stock for outfield prospect Alan Roden certainly went up a few notches during his impressive 2023 minor league season. After beginning the year outside of the Jays’ top prospects list, he rose all the way to seventh by the end of the season, becoming their top ranked outfield prospect in the process.

In 2023, Roden split his time between High-A Vancouver and Double-A New Hampshire in which he combined to hit .317 with an .890 OPS, along with a whopping 92 runs scored, 29 doubles, 10 home runs, 68 RBI and 24 stolen bases in 115 games played. More importantly, he demonstrated great discipline at the plate, with more registered walks than strikeouts on the season. In the field, he also held his own, committing only two errors across 823.1 innings of action, along with six outfield assists.

With the Jays looking for a solid option that could produce both offensively and defensively to potentially replace Kevin Kiermaier, Roden represents the best internal option available currently in their system. But even if the Jays end up re-signing Kiermaier or find another viable option for his replacement, a strong showing by Roden in Spring Training would give him a leg up on his competition in becoming the team’s fourth outfielder for 2024. In addition, his inclusion on the roster would also provide both speed off the bench, something that the Jays were often missing in 2023.