Troubling Blue Jays stat suggests new training staff will also be needed this offseason

For months now, we've been consistently talking about how poor of a season the 2024 campaign has been for the Toronto Blue Jays. A team full of promise and talent (at least on paper) has failed to regularly put together winning performances.

One of the more frustrating aspects to that is the fact that there's little to no help on the way from the minor leagues either. Down on the farm, the Blue Jays' system has been absolutely destroyed by arm injuries to the point where it's beginning to get concerning. The Jays already let go of two of their top pitching coordinators, but the training staff may need to follow them out the door.

Thanks to Doug Fox, a Blue Jays farm system guru, for pointing out just how bad this system and its injuries are looking (X link). According to him, here's a list of players who have had UCL tears at some point this year:

• Alek Manoah
• Brandon Barriera (Jays Journal No. 15 prospect)
• Landen Maroudis (Jays Journal No. 11)
• Chris McElvain
• Chad Dallas (Jays Journal No. 24)
• Ricky Tiedemann (Jays Journal No. 1)
• Carson Pierce
• Nolan Perry (Jays Journal No. 20)
• Kelena Sauer
• Stephen Vargas
• Justin Kelly

Obviously, this is a major problem. On another obvious note, there's a high probability that these injuries are just freak occurrences that just so happened to all come up at once. This is not a risk the Blue Jays should take though, especially with the organization already being active in a front office shakeup as the offseason nears.

Manoah's injury came at a bad time, as he was just starting to show the potential of a turnaround from last year's abysmal performances. His tear is the only one to occur at the big league level.

As seen above, a whopping five prospects in our midseason top-30 have gone down with significant arm injuries. This is a huge blow to a minor league system that doesn't have a whole lot of depth to pull from to begin with. Tiedemann, Barriera and Maroudis were especially difficult pills to swallow, as they are supposed to be a part of the next wave of studs in the Blue Jays' rotation.

It remains to be seen how the Jays will shift around their front office as the offseason nears and gets underway, but it seems, at least for now, that the organization could afford to put some extra dollars towards injury prevention and arm care moving forward.