Canadian content is covered by Ontarians Zack Breault, Randy Schwartz and Nick Purdy.

Berti (18); Baligod (40); and Davis (42) are college players taken in this years draft.

Most of the players with their ages after their name are holdovers from 2010.

Jonathon Jones was on the Lansing roster, he must have been demoted.

Chris Hawkins is on the Dunedin roster, perhaps as an injury replacement for Ryan Goins.

Recent draftee Chino Vega will also be joining Vancouver: http://www.news-journalonline.com/sports/baseball/2011/06/10/whats-in-a-name-as-jays-draft-vega.html

I wonder if it's possible Sanchez or Syndergaard is headed to Lansing and Hutchison gets promoted.

I mentioned a few days ago that AA had said that Sanchez and Syndergaard more most likely headed for Bluefield.

The current Jays management is all about not rushing prospects in their first few years.  The real battle will come in the spring of 2012 to see who gets to play in Lansing.

Being a Vancouver guy, I'm definitely a bit sad that the big name HS prospects the jays drafted won't be in Vancouver this year. What is the skill level difference between Vancouver and Bluefield?

Why is Opitz being sent to Vancouver rather than someone like Mims or Sweeney (who are the same age and play SS)? Is Opitz considered further along or a better prospect?

Mims is a 2B and I believe Sweeney was also moved either to 3B or 2B himself.

As I said in the opening Vancouver plays in a college heavy league that is close in level to Lansing.  The GCL is a league for high school and young latino players.  Bluefield is somewhere in between, it looks like the Jays will be sending mainly second year high school players to Bluefield.

To say it another way, most 18 year olds will play in the GCL.

Most 19 year olds will play in Bluefield.

And the 20 year olds and above will play in Vancouver.

Remember the roster could change quite a bit over the next few weeks so don't write off guys coming to Vancouver yet.

The two most prospect worthy players in Vancouver will be Opitz and Nicolino.  It is a vote of confidence in Nicolino to jump him ahead of his draft mates and send him to Vancouver.  If I was living in Vancouver I would get out to see him pitch.

 

thoughts:

Berti is 21

there's no obvious 1B on that list.

Ignore anything Kervin and Shwartz do - they are WAAAAY to old for that crowd.

I'm surprised not to see Griffin Murphy on this roster - is he possibly injured?

do we know who will start, beyond Nicolino, Purdy, and Hernandez?

One of the players I'm most excited to see is Roan Salas, our Rule 5 draft pick from the AA phase. 

To answer one of my own Questions - apparently Balbino has also been dropped from Lansing to Vancouver, presumably to play 1B.


Also, Mastro hit the DL so Perales' time in AA might be brief.

wonder if the Snider in CF thing was just a "what the hell" moment, or if they were clearly unsatisfied with Loewen out there?

This team better be good, because it seems that losing in Vancouver is not an appealing option.

Seriously, one of the very nice things about class A minor league ball is the low-key nature of the game.  It is basically the polar opposite of the 7th game of a Stanley Cup final in Canada. 

I have a feeling whether win or lose, that small percentage of thugs was planning on rioting and looting. I mean, you don't bring molotov cocktails and ski masks to watch a hockey game in mid june

Gary Mason, a reporter at the Globe and Mail, was there and tweeted live.  This is a pretty good summary.

Another interesting arm in Taylor Cole was added to the Vancouver roster

Forgive my minor-league ignorance. Bluefield, Vancouver, Dunedin and Lansing are all A-level teams, right? Gerry's age summary above is very helpful for figuring out how the new teams compare that way, but I'm still a little unclear on how they fit into the Jays' overall minor league structure, particularly in terms of quality of play.

And is there a sense that this is just a temporary move to accommodate the two recent big drafts? Will the number of teams drop back in the next couple of years?

The Jays have recently drafted a lot of high school players. They stay in the development system for a longer period, because of their draft age, and so the Jays system now has more players than they had several years ago.

In addition the jump from the GCL to Auburn (Vancouver) and Lansing was a big one and challenged some of the recent Jays players drafted from high school.

The seventh team, Bluefield, fills these two needs. It gives the Jays an extra team for all their players and it gives the high school players an intermediate stop between the GCL and Vancouver.

The Jays did have seven teams several years ago, the Jays used to have a team in Pulaski. But when JP Ricciairdi focused the draft on college players the Jays did not need the extra team. As long as the Jays draft plenty of high schoolers they will need the seventh team.

TamRa, as Kelekin mentioned, one of the players to watch on Vancouver this year will be 20 year old Roan Salas, a AA waiver draft pick up from the Tampa Bay system. He seemed to be an OBP "machine" but the power he was touted to have potential for had not yet developed, so they had left him available. He is a 1B, so unless one of our recent draft college-age 1B draft picks (Arce or Patterson) is signed before the start of the season, I expect we'll see Salas given the bulk of the playing time so the Jays can figure out what kind of a player he is.

I see Salas listed as a 1B now, but I was sure I'd seen him listed previously as a middle infielder, so that was why i asked. I wonder if Fuenmayor will play 3B or 1B

the two 3B on the roster are far too old and are obvious orginazational soldiers so maybe he plays 3B

(Thinking of Schwartz as 3B since that's how he was listed last year)

Not a lot to be excited about on that roster, frankly. Salas, Opitz, Nicolino...what else? someone mentioned Cole was interesting...

Cole looks like he's a "project". He was apparently hitting the mid-90's with his fastball coming out of high school, joined BYU and went on a 2 year mission, and then tried to come back to baseball. The results were not as impressive as his high school days. The Jays are betting that he can make up for the 2 years of pitching and development that he missed. Vancouver will be the first stop in their plan to get his arm strength back and teach him how to use it to get out professional hitters.

Thanks, Gerry. That explanation makes things clear. Appreciated.

I see Salas listed as a 1B now, but I was sure I'd seen him listed previously as a middle infielder

Salas has played 160 games over the last four years, two in the DSL and the last two in the VSL; 64 games at 2B (14 errors), 49 games at 3B (17 errors), 46 games at 1B (3 errors) and 1 game at SS (1 error). Perhaps he's versatile, perhaps he's just bad defensively. He's 5-11, 170, not the ideal size for 1B.

Of mild interest to me are three pretty solid college guys, Berti, OF Boike and SS Bartlett. Better talent will be promoted mid-season from Bluefield and the GCL.

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