The 2015 Toronto Blue Jays Minor League Handbook

The 2015 Toronto Blue Jays Minor League Handbook

Jay Blue

The 2015 Toronto Blue Jays Minor League Handbook

Published by BJfA Publications

Copyright 2015 BJfA Publications

Cover photo: Miguel Castro warms up before a game for the Lansing Lugnuts in West Michigan Photo: Jay Blue.

Photos are copyright Blue Jays from Away and may not be used or reproduced without permission. Photo of Nat Bailey Stadium is copyright Charlie Caskey and may not be used or reproduced without permission.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.

Table of Contents

Foreword

By Gerry McDonald

Introduction

- Stats

- How to Follow the Games

- About this book

Essay: Covering the Beat

By Jay Blue

2014 Draft Review

- Drafted Players

- Non-Drafted Free Agents (NDFA)

- International Free Agents (IFA)

2015 Toronto Blue Jays Minor League Affiliates

Buffalo Bisons

- 2015 Coaching Staff

- Playoff Procedures

- 2015 Schedule

- Website

- Directions and Parking

- About Coca-Cola Field

- Broadcast

- Local Colour

- Other Notes

New Hampshire Fisher Cats

- 2015 Coaching Staff

- Playoff Procedures

- 2015 Schedule

- Website

- Directions and Parking

- About Northeast Delta Dental Stadium

- Broadcast

- Local Colour

Dunedin Blue Jays

- 2015 Coaching Staff

- Playoff Procedures

- 2015 Schedule

- Website

- Directions and Parking

- About Florida Auto Exchange Stadium

- Broadcast

- Local Colour

Lansing Lugnuts

- 2015 Coaching Staff

- Playoff Procedures

- 2015 Schedule

- Website

- Directions and Parking

- About Cooley Law School Stadium

- Broadcast

- Local Colour

Vancouver Canadians

- 2015 Coaching Staff

- Playoff Procedures

- 2015 Schedule

- Website

- Directions and Parking

- About Scotiabank Field at Nat Bailey Stadium

- Broadcast

- Local Colour

Bluefield Blue Jays

- 2015 Coaching Staff

- Playoff Procedures

- 2015 Schedule

- Website

- Directions and Parking

- About Bowen Field

- Broadcast

- Local Colour

Gulf Coast League Blue Jays

- 2015 Coaching Staff

- Playoff Procedures

- 2015 Schedule

- Website

- Directions and Parking

- About the Bobby Mattick Training Facility

- Broadcast

- Local Colour

Dominican Summer League Blue Jays

- 2015 Coaching Staff

- 2015 Schedule

Player Profiles

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

R

S

T

U

V

W

Appendix 1: Positional Depth Chart

Appendix 2: Glossary

Appendix 3: Top Prospect Lists

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Connect with the Authors

Foreword

This minor league handbook includes profiles and scouting reports on over two hundred and fifty players, all whom dream of making it to the big leagues. But the road to the big leagues is littered with the dreams of those who never make it. Between ten and twenty percent of the players listed here will make it to the major leagues, but an even smaller percentage will have a lengthy major league career.It is a tough and relentless business.

But even facing that reality, baseball players are an optimistic bunch. Generally they are young and optimistic, and they get to hang out with their teammates and friends and play a game for a living, albeit a meager living in most cases. Consider a typical day for a minor leaguer when the team is at home. They wake up mid morning, get some breakfast and head to the stadium shortly after that. There they can eat, they can hit the weight room, they can hang out watching TV with their friends or they can play cards or a video game. Most start work around 2pm with optional workouts such as hitting in the cage or pitching and work on their technique. Pitchers also run a lot to maintain strength in their legs. The team warm-ups, stretching, throwing and batting practice starts around 3:30. They are done by 5:15 when they go have something to eat in the clubhouse and then play the game. After the game they eat again and then go hang out with their teammates until they get to bed in the early hours of the day. When the team is on the road they see even more of their teammates who they’re with for basically all their waking hours. Those tight bonds are cherished by teammates and are only disturbed when a player is promoted or demoted or worse, injured. Ballplayers generally don’t retire, they are released and the dream ends.

Players remain optimistic in the face of daunting odds and fans do too. Some of you will look at the players listed here and think that forty or fifty of them will be solid major leaguers; Hope springs eternal for prospect hounds. Sometimes that hope is realized. I started covering the minor leagues back in 2004 and that year’s Blue Jay team included Orlando Hudson, a 43rd round pick and Jason Frasor, a 33rd round pick. More recently Kevin Pillar was a 32nd round pick. If you have a uniform you have a chance. Yes, the first round picks have a better chance and are given a longer leash but you never know who will make it. Recent first round picks of the Jays include: Ricky Romero; Russ Adams; Kevin Ahrens; David Cooper; Deck McGuire; and Jacob Anderson. None of those players are on a top thirty list.

So what does this mean to your enjoyment of this handbook? Any of these players can make it to the major leagues. Some of the top ranked players will not and some lesser known player will come out of nowhere to get on the prospect radar screen. These are mostly very young players whose bodies and minds are still maturing. A pitcher might learn a new pitch, or a new delivery to improve his command; just look at how fast and far Kendall Graveman rose last year. A hitter might change his stance to get a better look at the ball. I guarantee you that some player will suddenly start making headlines in 2015 and you will say who is that guy? The answer will be here in these pages. In 2014 Miguel Castro became known to many fans for the first time. Readers of the Handbook would have known of him earlier.

I have been covering the minor leagues for twelve years now. In each of those twelve years I have travelled to see the Jays minor leaguers. Back in the day I could drive to Syracuse or Auburn, but neither of those teams are affiliated with the Blue Jays any more. The closest trips from Toronto are now Buffalo for AAA, Erie, Pa. to see the Fisher Cats make their annual visit, or Lansing to see some A ball. Every other location takes a drive of eight hours or more, or a flight. I have been to spring training several times but I have never seen the big leaguers play. My reasoning is that I can see those guys 162 times a year on my TV so I elect to go to the minor league complex where there are usually two, and up to four, games being played at the same time. The players who are not in the game are hanging out on the bleachers watching and most are happy to talk with a stranger. For a minor league fan it is like a big buffet, your head is often on a swivel trying to keep up with the action on all the diamonds.

When I have traveled to visit the Jays minor league teams the managers, coaches and players have almost always been happy to talk with me. Only once did I get the brush off, and that was from a Syracuse pitching coach who didn’t last long in the Jays system. Most minor league teams have minimal local coverage, there might be one reporter covering the team but usually only for home games. The atmosphere is very different from the big leagues where there are at least a dozen reporters hanging around. Before a minor league game the only media is the home team broadcaster trying to find a player to go on the pre-game show. Players love to talk, after all they need to practice their media skills for the show. The most practiced media skills I noted were from Drew Hutchison. I interviewed him in Lansing when he was twenty years old and he already had the clichés down pat.

As I think back on those twelve years I have many fond memories. I remember seeing Shaun Marcum pitch beautifully in AAA with his soft stuff. I had to ask a scout will that work in the big leagues? He told me as long as he could keep fooling hitters it would work, and it did. I remember seeing Drew Hutchison pitch in Lansing, it was what I call my Groundhog Day. Drew kept hitting the catcher’s mitt down and away, pitch after pitch after pitch. It was the best command I have seen in A ball. I was in Auburn for Casey Janssen’s first ever start as a professional. He had just signed and had that California surfer look to him. I remember seeing Adam Lind that day too and noting what a beautiful swing he had. I saw Ricky Romero pitch in AA when everyone was saying he was a bust and I thought that he had the tools to make it to the big leagues. Similarly I saw Daniel Norris pitch in Lansing when there were questions over his future, I could see his potential. I was in Dunedin, at spring training, standing beside Alex Anthopoulos and some other front office personnel, as they watch Aaron Sanchez in his first spring training. Sanchez threw a beautiful breaking ball that got Alex and the front office guys excited. We didn’t see much of that pitch last season but I know it’s in there somewhere.

There have been very few lowlights of my trips to the minor leagues, but the travel would be number one. But it’s just not the travel, often you are sitting in a hotel room in an old American city waiting for two or three o clock to roll round so you can hit the park. As a visitor I love double headers, I would get to see 14 innings instead of nine. Obviously rain would be unwelcome but I have generally fared well in that regard. I like an extra inning game as much as anyone but not on the last day of a series. When you are ready to head for home at 5pm in Lansing, and the game goes to extra innings, you are torn between the desire to get on the road and the opportunity to see some free baseball. As I loitered around the clubhouse or the infield players have asked me if I was a drug tester or if I was a scout. I was a scout of sorts, just not a professional one, and you can be one too. And if you keep your eyes open, you can find the pro scouts and pick up a tip or two from them during the game. Just don’t ask questions when a new pitcher comes into the game.

As the minor league teams start playing in 2015, and as you scout the box scores or, if you are lucky, the games, pay attention to the following nuggets I have learned in my years following the Jays system:

1. Don’t get too excited about a hot start for a player. Any player can have a hot month. If you want to see if you should get excited look at strikeouts. If a hitter is not striking out then he is obviously seeing the ball well. If he is also showing some power that makes it better. If you want to invest some time, look at the play by play on MiLB.com; if the hitter is hitting line drives, that is better than swinging bunts, infield pop ups or ground balls. For a pitcher, in addition to the strikeouts, look at the hits off him, is he allowing line drives or bloops? You can also listen to internet radio broadcasts to get an even better idea of a player’s performance.

2. No matter how hot a player starts, the odds are he won't get promoted until the summer. If a player gets promoted quickly, the staff is saying that they misjudged the skills of this player when making his initial assignment. They usually don’t do that.

3. If the Blue Jays like a pitcher they will generally make him a starter at the mid-to-lower levels. In the minor leagues, the most promising pitchers are starters. If you like a pitcher and the Jays put him in the bullpen, you know then that management doesn't like him as much as you do. There are a few exceptions but they are rare, most major league relievers were minor league starters.

4. Pitchers are always tinkering with their delivery or with new pitches. If a starter gets bombed for a few starts in a row, don’t fret, he could be trying something new and it’s not working.

5. You might not believe this but the standard of fielding in the major leagues is very good. Just because a player has a position in the minor leagues it doesn't mean he can handle that position in the big leagues and a small shift down the defensive spectrum can mean big consequences for how a player is expected to produce with the bat. A minor league centerfielder who hits .300 with a little power might not make the grade if he has to play left field in the major leagues. And a catcher has to be a good defensive catcher or a great hitter, poor defense doesn’t go with average hitting, particularly behind the plate.

6. Don’t be worried if a player misses a game or two. If he is seriously injured he will be placed on the DL; remember that in the minor leagues, the DL is only for seven days. If he misses a game or two he likely has a tweaked muscle and should be back in a few days. Baseball is a physical game, players get hurt. Also, from time to time, players go on the DL for mental reasons or for lack of hustle. Don’t expect to know what the injury is either. There are medical and legal confidentiality issues at play but in addition to that, the Blue Jays are notoriously secretive about injuries to their minor leaguers.

The availability of this minor league handbook is just one of the advances I have seen over the last twelve years. Back in 2004 when I got started, YouTube had not been invented and video cameras were big and clunky, and certainly not on your phone. Today from our phones we can see many of these players on video or even see whole games on MiLB TV. Radio broadcasts are also available for most teams. It is great time to be a fan of minor league baseball.

Gerry McDonald

Introduction

We made it to the second edition of the Toronto Blue Jays Minor League Handbook. Last year, Charlie Caskey, Jared Macdonald and I offered readers what we hoped was the most comprehensive coverage of the Blue Jays’ minor league system and the 2015 volume is bigger than last year’s.

While I wrote on my own this year, I think that fans of the Blue Jays’ minor leagues are getting an even better deal with the combination of the e-book with its online brother, the Premium Content section of Blue Jays from Away. Both resources can be enjoyed separately but the Premium Content section of Blue Jays from Away will offer features that we simply can’t with the Minor League Handbook due to time, space and format considerations.

If you’re reading this, you’re already hungry for knowledge about the players who make up the Blue Jays’ minor leagues and this year, we’re covering the 250+ players in the system to an even greater degree. We’ve instituted a new format for the player profiles and those profiles add up to about 45% more space and more information about your favourite players over last year’s edition. I’ve particularly enjoyed the research process this year, uncovering more interesting tidbits about players that I thought I knew everything about. We also have the same coverage we provided last year with individual team summaries, a 2014 draft summary and our appendices.

Once again, we’re going to be focusing on our electronic formats built around this e-book. We’re planning to make sure it’s available in as many formats as possible. Despite the portability and usefulness of the e-book format, it does have its limitations. We can’t give you nice looking charts and graphs and photos. Those elements would compromise readability across a number of platforms so we’ve deliberately kept things simple. To enhance the e-book, we’re going live with the Premium Content section of Blue Jays from Away. The Premium Content section will be like an online version of the Handbook, giving each player his own page with stats, photos and video (where available). Some of the fancier features might take part of April to go live (particularly the video elements). Readers will have the opportunity to purchase both a subscription to the Blue Jays from Away Premium Content section as well as the 2015 Toronto Blue Jays Minor League Handbook at one low price. Of course, both can be enjoyed separately.

I’ve spent a lot of time watching Blue Jays minor league baseball over the past three seasons, getting to as many of the affiliates’ as possible while conducting interviews with players and coaches, compiling scouting reports, talking to scouts, reporters, broadcasters and fans. I’ve been able to see a very large percentage of the players in the system first-hand and those who I haven’t seen, I’m writing about after doing a lot of research online or with people who have seen them play. I hope that you enjoy the insights that I’m able to bring to you when reading this book.

Last year, I wrote that every player has a story. Some of these guys were national stars right from their high school days and got a lot of attention early on in their careers. Other players that you’ll find in this book were never stars and never even had great college careers. The one thing that they all have in common is that a scout or executive, somewhere, at some point, saw something in each player that he believed in and offered him a contract with the Toronto Blue Jays.

That contract gives each of these players a chance. The ones who make the big leagues are the ones who are able to figure out how to make the most of the talents that he came into the game with. It’s not a linear trajectory and many players never figure out how to compete at progressively higher and higher levels despite oodles of talent.

The biggest thing to keep in mind when watching minor league players is that they are works in progress, particularly if they’re going to get to the majors. Rarely can a player enter professional baseball with the skills already developed to the point where he can play in the majors. When you’re watching players in the minor leagues, it’s important to look for development. Is a player laying off pitches that he would have swung at last year? Has a pitcher refined his control or the consistency on his breaking pitches? Last year we saw what adding a new pitch can do for a pitcher. Kendall Graveman rose from Lansing all the way to the big leagues and is competing for a job in the Oakland A’s rotation thanks to learning a cutter.

This book is designed to accompany you as you spend the 2015 season following the Toronto Blue Jays and their minor league affiliates. With the 2015 Toronto Blue Jays Minor League Handbook (and/or a subscription to the Premium Content section at Blue Jays from Away), you'll know who is on the cusp of being called up to the majors and who could be making his North American debut in the Gulf Coast League after coming over from the Dominican Summer League. You'll know to whom the Blue Jays have handed out big signing bonuses and who they've signed to minor league free agent contracts to fill roster spots for this season.

Stats

Like last year, tapping or clicking on a player’s name in the 2015 Toronto Blue Jays Minor League Handbook will take you to his Baseball Reference page filled with useful statistical information. We’ve been able to include stats in the Blue Jays from Away Premium Content section but because of our format here, we’re limited to what we can do in terms of charts.

I’ve tried to build a player’s profile around who he is rather than what he’s done on the baseball field. It’s a fine line of trying to keep things interesting and giving the reader the best glimpse a player’s realistic role on a team and at a particular level. I wish I could write that every player is going to be a major leaguer but the fact is that only a small percentage of major leaguers reach that level. Additionally, when giving an MLB ETA, I’m generally being very optimistic that the player will reach his ceiling. Many players don’t.

This year, in the player profiles, I’ve included a lot more information about the players’ year-to-year performances. In doing so, I’m aware that some of these stats might be hard to follow, particularly since I’m using some stats that go a step beyond the typical batting average, home runs and runs batted in. I’ve chosen stats that try to help understand what a player is doing well and leaves out elements of the game that are beyond his control.

You’ll see strikeout and walk rates cited a lot (K%, BB%). These are extremely important both for pitchers and hitters because they’re some of the best indicators of future performance for minor leaguers. I prefer to use the rate statistic over the strikeouts or walks per nine innings pitched (K/9; BB/9) because using innings pitched as a denominator can be misleading, particularly if a pitcher is either very efficient or allows a lot of baserunners. The longer the innings are, the more batters he faces and a high K/9 or BB/9 is mitigated by the number of batters a pitcher faces per inning. The K% or BB% gives us a much clearer picture of how a pitcher is doing overall.

On the hitting side, if a player is striking out a lot and not walking much, those tendencies tend to get amplified as he moves up the ladder towards the major leagues. On the pitching side, a low strikeout rate could mean that the pitcher isn’t fooling a lot of hitters which is something that frequently leads to hard contact and inflated numbers as the pitcher moves to higher levels. The caveat is that K% is not the only thing to look for and there are pitchers who don’t strike out a lot of batters who can still be successful at higher levels of the minors and even into the major leagues (Henderson Alvarez is a perfect example). The particular caveat here is that strikeout and walk rates should be used as an important tool in getting an overall picture of a player but they can never give you the whole picture.

On occasion, you’ll see me cite BABIP or Batting Average on Balls In Play. This stat looks at how many balls that are put in play go for hits and the league average hovers around .300. The stat varies wildly for pitchers and is one factor in how we look at luck. If a pitcher has a high BABIP against in a particular year, we can generally say that other stats (like ERA and WHIP) that get inflated due to an above-average number of balls falling in for hits will regress towards the norm in subsequent years as the luck returns to average levels. For hitters, there is actually some correlation between BABIP and ability. Faster players will frequently have a higher BABIP thanks to their ability to beat out infield hits while players who consistently hit the ball hard will usually have a higher BABIP. While there can be fluctuation in BABIP from year to year, I’ve found that many hitters, once they reach their peak abilities, have a batting average that will hover around their BABIP from year to year, staying within a certain numerical range. For example, Jose Reyes’s batting average tends to stay quite consistently between about 20 and 30 points lower than his BABIP and so, if he’s getting a little luckier in a particular year, you’ll see a corresponding rise between his BABIP and his batting average.

The Ground-Out-to-Air-Out ratio (GO/AO) tells us how many of the outs that a pitcher gets (on balls in play) come via the ground or the air. Obviously, a pitcher wants to give up fewer fly balls because those turn into extra-base hits more often. The GO/AO ratio is frequently the stat I’ll look at, especially if a pitcher has relatively low strikeout rates. If he’s not striking out batters but is getting a lot of ground balls (and double plays), he will probably see some improvements in his numbers as he rises through the minor leagues, primarily because infield defense improves as you get closer to the major leagues, turning more of those ground balls into outs.

Stat Sources

I find Baseball Reference to be the best site in terms of the overall visual layout. It is particularly terrific if you want to see individual game stats for a player, even at the minor league level. They have a game log and split the stats by month, against his opponents’ handedness and other fun things to know. A newer feature is that you can go to the game log, highlight a selection of time between two individual games and it will calculate the stats from that time period for you. They are also including winter league stats now from the Arizona Fall League, Caribbean and Australian winter leagues. Baseball Reference is also at the leading edge when it comes to international playing and it includes stats from Japan, Korea, Italy, Mexico and other international leagues.

Fangraphs is a more mathematically-based site and calculates BABIP, FIP, K% and BB% for you (if you’re not sure what any of those things mean, check out our Glossary). Its format isn’t always the easiest to read for minor league stats but it goes into more detail with the type of stats that normally require an extra level of calculation.

MiLB.com is usually the most accurate (there are occasionally some discrepancies between sites). MiLB.com has a call center in New York that the official scorekeeper from every minor league game calls in to in between innings to report the results of the previous half inning of play. One of the most important stats that they carry that the others don’t is ground out/air out ratios for pitchers. The reason they can do this is because they are getting the eye-witness reports of the game’s results from the official scorers and are able to include that information.

One site that I’ve found recently is MLBfarm.com. In addition to compiling stats, they have created an incredible array of graphs, charts and diagrams from the MiLB.com information in a way that is similar to what Brooks Baseball provides for major leaguers. When searching players, make sure to enter his last name first or else the search feature doesn’t work.

My go-to site for college stats is thebaseballcube.com. This site is a phenomenal tool for getting stats from a player’s career and it has stats for college (for most NCAA colleges) and even some summer, wood-bat leagues (like the Cape Cod League).

There is no real equivalent for the type of pitch data that is available with major league players (at least publically: major league teams do track PitchF/x data for their own use at their minor league parks). If you look up individual game box scores for Double-A and Triple-A games via MiLB.com Gameday, you can see locations of pitches but pitch types and velocities aren’t kept.

How to Follow the Games

The internet has made following the games much easier. By subscribing to MiLB.tv, you can get all Triple-A games on your computer (or other device) as live (or archived), streaming video. Some Double-A and even Class-A teams also broadcast video of their games but it’s still fairly rare at those lower levels, and camera angles and picture quality vary wildly.

All of the teams except for the GCL Blue Jays broadcast their games on terrestrial radio as well as over the internet. Bluefield doesn’t broadcast every home game on the radio but, in the past, has covered all road games. Check team websites for more up-to-date details. We’ll tell you more about the broadcasters involved in the sections on individual teams but they are all excellent and can really help you feel like you’re at the ballpark.

You can also follow Double-A and Triple-A games on MiLB.com’s Gameday. Just head to the MiLB.com website and click on the Gameday button instead of the boxscore button. This program works similarly to the same one that allows you to follow major league games online on MLB.com.

Live boxscores are available online at MiLB.com. They’re updated at least once every half inning (although if you’re listening and/or watching, there may be a delay with the box score) and are generally pretty good, even for the lower level games. Again, they’re updated from the office in New York after contact with the official scorekeeper at the actual location of the game.

Finally, you can go to the games! The section on each team includes information about the team’s ballpark, the local area and what you can expect when you go. This book isn’t a travel guide so we’re not going to give you the names of hotels or prices but if you’re looking for budget accommodations, I’ve been very successful with Priceline.com (particularly when I’ve traveled to games in Michigan, New Hampshire and Buffalo) as well as Airbnb.com (when I’ve gone down to Dunedin for Spring Training).

When you are watching the games, listening to them or just following along in the box scores, keep in mind that the players, especially the younger ones, are works in progress. One good or bad game doesn’t tell you everything about a player which is why scouts and writers like to get multiple opinions about players before they make up their minds. If you were watching the Lansing Lugnuts play their final game of the season in 2014 (on September 1), you might wonder why Rowdy Tellez, who went three for three with a home run, isn’t in the majors, especially if you also saw him hit a home run in his only at bat in big league spring training! He wasn’t always fantastic, particularly at the beginning of the year in Bluefield but his strong finish to the season at a higher level in Lansing last year is very encouraging.

Players aren’t going to be the best version of themselves every game. Consistency and constant improvement are the ultimate prizes for minor leaguers making their way up the ladder. When you follow games (or go to them), it's as important to compare players to themselves at an earlier time as it is to compare them to each other and their competition.

Remember that player development is about process rather than product, especially in the lower minors. An 0/4 day for a hitter can be a great step in the right direction if he’s making hard contact, laying off pitches out of the zone and working on improving his mechanics. A pitcher can be hitting his spots, getting good break on his offspeed pitches but gives up a lot of hits into holes and gaps. As Gerry McDonald wrote in his Foreward, defense in the minors isn’t nearly as good as it is in the majors and the decisions made by umpires and official scorers may hide what is actually going on in the game. They’re making judgement calls on the diamond and the further away you get from the action, the more the stats and results of a particular game may lie. You should also keep in mind that the umpires in the minor leagues are works in progress too! Especially in Rookie Ball, these umpires are just out of umpiring school and are going to make mistakes, just like the young players. By watching for little improvements in a player from inning to inning and game to game, you can get the most out of your minor league baseball experience.

About this Book

The 2015 Toronto Blue Jays Minor League Handbook is divided up into three main sections. The first is the one that you’re reading right now. In it, we have the foreword, this introduction as well our annual essay that will hopefully whet your appetite for minor league baseball. This year, I’m contributing the essay Covering the Beat to give you a little bit of insight what my life is like when I head out on the road to go down to spring training or to cover one of Jays’ minor league affiliates.

This essay is followed by a summary of the 2014 draft. You’ll get an overview followed by a blow by blow account of who the Blue Jays selected where in the 2014 draft and whether they did or didn’t sign (and for how much money). Our draft overview looks at trends to see what might come of the draft in a few years time.

The two most important sections of this book come next. The first is your guide to the Toronto Blue Jays’ minor league system with entries for each minor league affiliate. Each entry gives you a historical background on professional baseball in that particular city, the Blue Jays affiliation with the club and notable names from past seasons.

In the team sections we have also included the 2014 coaching staff, the 2014 schedule, as well as information about parking, directions, the stadium, broadcasts and the local area.

The third section shows our commitment to the democratization of minor league baseball. Instead of subjectively ranking players either by their prospect status or by level, we have decided to include all of the players expected to play in the Blue Jays’ minor league system alphabetically. By using the Table of Contents, you can link to the letter of the player’s last name and find his entry quickly from there. We have entries for over 250 players, from Andrew Albers to Randy Wolf.

That’s the big reason why this book is so big. To give you some perspective, some published prospect guides give you the top 100 prospects in the majors or 30 (or fewer) for each organization. The beauty of our digital-only format is that we don’t have to cut and trim. You don’t have to carry a big, heavy book around with you and we’re able to include much more information about more players than anyone else. Blue Jays fans deserve nothing but the best.

Finally, we’ve added some extra content like the positional depth chart which will let you know who stands where among position players in the minor league system (at least in my opinion). As mentioned above, we’ve included a glossary which will help you with any acronyms or advanced stats that you might need to decipher. Our third appendix is where we link to top prospect lists. While we want this book to be as egalitarian as possible, we acknowledge that minor leaguers are categorized and ranked incessantly. While we’re not going to give you a list of our own, we do link to a selection of the many lists that are out there.

I want to thank you for purchasing the 2015 Toronto Blue Jays Minor League Handbook. If you see me at a ballgame in 2015 (keep an eye on @JaysfromAway on Twitter) give me a tweet and say hello!

Essay: Covering the Beat

By Jay Blue

I started covering the Blue Jays minor leagues in 2013 and quickly discovered the joys and stresses of life on the road. There’s definitely a routine but it can be a pretty hectic and stressful schedule when you’re squeezing trips into a regular, everyday life.

My first trip as an accredited member of the media was in 2013 to Lansing to cover the Lugnuts. Not only was it amazing to get down on the field during batting practice and to sit in the press box during games, chatting (when appropriate) with other bloggers and the official scorer, but the ability to go into the clubhouse and talk to the players and coaches shed a lot of light onto the games. While some coaches and players were a little intimidating at first, no one was rude or dismissive. My first few interviews were with Chris Hawkins, Justin Jackson and Dalton Pompey and all three were tremendously generous with their time.

In addition to the players and coaches being accommodating and friendly, I found the Lugnuts’ staff to be extremely warm and, to this day, I consider myself to be at home when I’m at Cooley Law School Stadium. Thanks to Jesse Goldberg-Strassler and the rest of the folks at the Lugnuts, I always felt welcome and have since been welcomed by other teams in the Midwest League to be able to watch the Lugnuts at several other ballparks.

A typical night-game day involves getting to the ballpark around two or three o’clock. I usually head to the press box and check out the lineups and that day’s game notes for the both teams (if they’re available yet). I generally get there a little bit before the team starts their on-field workouts and sometimes, if I’m early enough, I’ll head down to the clubhouse to talk to a player or one of the coaches before the schedule kicks into a higher gear. A pitcher or two is usually going to see some action in the bullpen, getting his side work in and I’ll watch a little bit of that while taking pictures. Batting practice usually starts around 3:30 or 4:00 pm and I’ll watch the players take BP while taking some more photos. I particularly watch for the quality of a player’s swing mechanics in BP rather than in the game. You can tell a lot from what a guy does in BP and how the ball travels off his bat. When a scout talks about raw power, this is usually what they’re talking about: how much power does a guy hit with in batting practice.

The home team usually finishes their BP sessions around 5:00pm which gives them a couple of hours of down time before the game starts. With the Lugnuts (and many other teams), the clubhouse closes to the media one hour before game times so I’ve got about an hour to do interviews for the podcast. In those early days, I might try to get to know a player or two (or even another blogger) who could point out the players that I wanted to talk to. It’s sometimes tough to recognize the player when he’s out of uniform without that all-useful number to help you identify him! I’d do my interviews and then head back up to the press box for dinner while relaxing a bit before the game starts.

The first year that I was getting to the park, I might only watch the game from the press box but that has changed quite a bit. These days, I try to watch the game from right behind the plate, as close as I can get unless the weather gets bad. I’ll try to park myself behind either the Jays’ affiliate’s pitchers who are charting the game or a scout so that I can get more accurate radar gun readings than are on the scoreboard (some scoreboards are more accurate than others). I watch the pitchers mechanics, the movement on the ball and try to focus on how he’s hitting the spots that the catcher is asking for. I will also take some photos and video and get pictures of the hitters in the other half of an inning, all the while tweeting what’s going on! I’m rarely sitting in my seat for more than a half-inning and don’t usually spend much time in the press box anymore during the game.

My trips down to spring training have had some pretty hectic days. In 2014, I was doing interviews with players for podcasts for the Canadian Baseball Network, getting content for Blue Jays from Away as well as Grading on the Curve, where I was a co-editor. By serving three different outlets, my time was at a premium.

My day would start around 7:00 am as I drove to the Bobby Mattick Complex to do interviews with players before they started their day. Then I’d head over to a Starbucks for another coffee and to do some writing for Grading on the Curve and Blue Jays from Away. Then I’d head back to the complex around 10 or 10:30 am to watch batting practice and bullpen sessions. I’d get some lunch and then return around 1 pm for the days’ minor league games (or go to the Phillies’ complex in nearby Clearwater). Once the games were over, it was back to where I was staying or another Starbucks) and start writing blogs for the next day!

The best part of traveling to see the teams is not just being able to see some great baseball from a far more intimate angle than you would get at Rogers Centre, it’s the people who you meet along the way. The Blue Jays have drafted classy players and it’s been my privilege to meet so many of them. Not only are most of them humble and friendly but they’re happy to talk baseball with you. I’ve learned a great deal about what a particular pitcher will throw, who came to camp in great shape or guys impress their teammates the most from these casual chats.

I’ve also found that the people who work for the Blue Jays’ minor league affiliates are all excellent at what they do. The broadcasters have been outstanding to deal with and are all really generous with their time to tell you about their favourite ballplayers who have come through that team (Kevin Pillar gets particularly high praise). Getting to hear the insiders’ view on who made an impression on the experienced baseball people who work for the clubs is extremely useful when trying to get a complete picture of the person putting on that uniform every day.

Another great thing about seeing so many different teams play is that you get to experience the differences in the way the game is played and experienced by the players and the fans. In the Appalachian League, there are loyal and enthusiastic fans but you rarely see more than 700 or 800 people in attendance at the game. Bowen Field in Bluefield is an old stadium with a rustic charm. I’ve heard mixed things from players. Some love the small-town feel and vibe and others yearn for a bigger-city environment.

While I haven’t made it to Vancouver in the summer yet, everyone who has played there raves about the city, the ballpark, the fans and the organization. Vancouver is a true big-league town that, thanks to a strange quirk of fate, has become a Short-Season-A