With the Toronto Blue Jays stumbling out of the gate this season, it is difficult to look back on previous years drafts and unsigned free agents. While baseball prospects can be very unpredictable, it is tough to see former Blue Jays draft picks and prospects tearing up the big leagues.
When the 2019 season began, not many Toronto Blue Jays fans would have thought that Freddy Galvis would lead the team in home runs ten games into the season. While the bats have been lost in Toronto’s Pearson airport and the starting rotation has been phenomenal at striking batters out, the team has stumbled into early April with a 3-8 record.
Looking back over the past ten years, the Toronto Blue Jays have drafted quite well in terms of stocking the farm system. That was before general manager Alex Anthopoulos decimated the minor league system for the Blue Jays, putting all his chips in for a playoff run in 2015 and 2016 (which we did not win, but we came close). The only thing to show for it was a bat flip home run that will stand the test of time for the next century.
While the Blue Jays also did draft well, some prospects decided not to sign with the team and would take their talents elsewhere, leaving the team empty-handed in the early rounds of the amateur draft.
This would lead to the Toronto Blue Jays with a weak farm system until recent years, where the team now boasts two of the top twenty prospects in baseball coming into 2019 (Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette).
What would the team look like if we had kept some of the prospects? What if we hadn’t traded away this player or that player? Would the 2019 team be any different?