Blue Jays prospects continue freefall in the industry’s top prospect rankings

Things may not have gone the Toronto Blue Jays’ way for 2024 as it has now since become a lost season. However, it hasn’t been just the players at the major league level that had been underachieving and underperforming this year. It has become apparent now that even some of their top prospects have been suffering the same fate as well.

Both Jays Journal No. 1 prospect Ricky Tiedemann and No. 2 prospect Orelvis Martinez entered the year as the organization’s top pitching and hitting prospects, respectively. Not only that, both top prospects were among many industry’s Top 100 MLB prospects list. However, with what seemed to be a run of bad luck by the Jays, with Tiedemann needing Tommy John surgery and Martinez enduring an 80-game suspension due to PEDs, they have seen their rankings continue to drop as the season wore on.

With Baseball America’s Top 100 Prospect rankings (subscription required), Martinez began the year at No. 51, but had since fallen to No. 83. But with his return from his suspension on the horizon, he has risen slightly to No. 78 in their latest rankings. As for Tiedemann, his stock has plummeted the most, going from No. 33 early in year down to No. 85 midseason, and now being completely off the list. Even worse for MLB Pipeline, not a single Blue Jays prospect can be found on their current Top 100 Prospects list.

That can be quite worrisome for the Jays, as for an organization that was already struggling to find success at the big league level, immediate help now doesn’t look to be on the way at least from an internal standpoint at this rate. 

Nevertheless, there could be some signs of optimism following their mass influx of prospects from the trade deadline. In doing so, they have practically restocked the Jays’ farm system with many Top 30 organizational prospects. More significantly, three of the new additions can be found in the Jays’ Top 10 and a total of nine fresh faces are firmly in the Jays’ Top 30. 

In addition, with a strong recent draft of top pitching prospect Trey Yesavage, he has already climbed to No. 2 in the Jays’ system according to MLB Pipeline without a single professional game under his belt. On top of that, last year’s first-round pick Arjun Nimmala has been putting together a strong stretch with the Jays’ Single-A affiliate Dunedin as of late. He has been hitting close to .300 with a .900+ OPS, along with 6 home runs and 19 RBI since the beginning of August, giving much hope and promise for the future.

As a result, it is possible that we may slowly yet surely see an infusion of top Jays prospects back into many industry’s Top 100 rankings in the upcoming season. But for now, we just need to accept the fact that 2024 hasn’t turned out to be a year for both the parent Blue Jays club, as well as their top prospects in their farm system.