One hyped Blue Jays prospect at every minor league level that may disappoint in 2023

Over the years, the Toronto Blue Jays have groomed many great prospects into becoming valuable Major League players. Some, like Alek Manoah, flew through the minor league system way ahead of time to become a main contributor to the ballclub, whereas for others, like Nate Pearson, would take a longer time, encountering many bumps along the road, despite being ranked highly in the system from the start.

Here we take a look at one hyped prospect at each of the Blue Jays’ minor league affiliates that may not progress as fast as one would expect for 2023.

Single-A Dunedin Blue Jays – Adrian Pinto

During the 2021-22 offseason, the Jays had traded Randal Grichuk to the Colorado Rockies for Raimel Tapia and an intriguing prospect in Pinto. He possessed elite skills in hitting, speed, and in the field, despite having a stature of only 5-foot-6. He put that in full display during his Dominican Summer League MVP season in 2021, when he hit .360 with a 1.029 OPS, stealing 41 bases, and walked 38 times compared to only 18 strikeouts.  That placed him already as the 15th highest ranked prospect when he joined the Jays’ system in 2022. The Jays were hoping he could continue to advance his development with their Single-A affiliate Dunedin Blue Jays. 

However, for the 2022 season, Pinto hit only .242, with an OPS of .738, with 18 stolen bases, showing some slight regression compared to his previous output, but he still possessed the valuable tools in his makeup to break out any time. For the start of the 2023 season, he has once again been assigned to start the season in Dunedin, as opposed to promoting him to start in High-A Vancouver. Perhaps they believe he will need a little more seasoning time to develop the various aspects of his game since he is after all only 20 years old. So far after six games, he has hit .278 with a couple RBI and has stolen five bases. Those that were expecting him to fly through the Jays’ minor league system will have the temper their expectations a bit and let this be a growth and developmental year for Pinto.

Double-A New Hampshire Fisher Cats – Adam Kloffenstein

Kloffenstein was drafted by the Blue Jays back in the 3rd round of the 2018 Amateur Draft. He was a highly touted prospect at the time as he jumped right into the Jays’ top ten prospects list. He offers a four-pitch arsenal, fastball, curveball, slider with horizontal movement, and changeup in which he commands pretty well, leading to many whiffs and ground balls in play. Kloffenstein debuted with a great year in 2019 with the Vancouver Canadians, pitching to a 2.24 ERA with a 1.09 WHIP and striking out 64 in 64.1 innings.

After a down year from the COVID-cancelled season, he had moved up to Double-A New Hampshire, where he began to struggle with a six-plus ERA and a 1.6 plus WHIP. This year, he has remained with the Fisher Cats again and has gotten off to a rough start as well, as in two starts, he has given up five earned runs with six walks, with eight strikeouts over just seven innings of work. It appears that it may take a little more time than expected to get Kloffenstein acclimatized in utilizing all his pitches to his optimal ability, and hopefully he can get his mechanics worked out sooner than later to move on further up the system.

Triple-A Buffalo Bisons – Hayden Juenger

Hayden Juenger was drafted by the Blue Jays in the 6th round of the 2021 Amateur Draft. He advanced through the Jays’ minor league system at a rapid rate and was predicted to make his MLB debut some time during 2022 already. Ranked in the Blue Jays’ top ten prospects for the past couple of years, Juenger utilizes a plus fastball to go along with a slider that helps induce swing-and-misses, together with a changeup to help him develop into a primarily bulk relief role potentially for his career. In 2022, he pitched effectively to a 3.76 ERA with a WHIP of 1.128 with 100 strikeouts over 88.2 innings. His main weaknesses are being able to execute his pitches more consistently, and making mistakes that make his unhittable pitches vulnerable, as he had also given up 18 home runs despite being dominant. For this year, he started again at Buffalo to hone his craft and thus far, has given up four runs over 9.1 innings with 15 strikeouts and a WHIP of about 1.4.

Juenger’s overall development may not be that disappointing thus far, but to Jays’ fans, they’ll be disappointed not to see him yet in the big leagues as he is still behind a few others such as Nate Pearson and Yosver Zulueta and others in line to be called up. So he may find himself spending a little more time at Triple-A than needed, and at the same time, must demonstrate that he has stabilized his control and command of his pitches consistently to become a premium MLB reliever.