Pompey is now 3rd in the FSL in slugging percentage (behind a first baseman and a 25 year old second baseman).  He has an OBP of .405, and is 18-1 stealing bases.  He is, by all accounts, a good (or better) defensive centerfielder.  He is hitting very well from both sides (more power from the right, a better average from the left).  The last centerfielder to come up through Dunedin like this was Alex Rios, and he was nowhere near as good at the same age.  Vernon Wells tore through Dunedin at age 20, and was actually a little better than Pompey. 

Just to add to what Mike said. Pompey is now 88-14 in career base stealing. Since an inexplicable Mendoza line May 2013 he's maintained a .400 OBP for nearly a year since that time. He also hit all 6 of his Lansing HR's in the second half of 2013, which means he's hit 11 HR's in less than a year. I guess he doesn't need to drop switch-hitting.

A question regarding how to handle Norris: I hear calls for him to be promoted and that seems logical based on numbers. But at the same time, he's only averaging 5 innings per start.

I would assume that has to do with innings limits but at the same time it also means he isn't seeing lineups for a 3rd and 4th time. That would seem to me to be an important part of development (learning to adjust to adjustments). I wonder if it might not be better to see a few 7-8 inning performances out of him before we push him to the next level.

Norris is 21.  Perhaps the club has some reason for the tight pitch count with him, but it does seem to be the way that they are treating all their pitchers from Aaron Sanchez to Taylor Cole to Matt Boyd. If you are going to move to a tandem system, then do it.  If not, then you are better off stretching out your pitchers when they are 20/21. 

Before Dewey gets here, let me point out that Copeland had a forgettable start, not a forgetful one. Unless he pitched badly because he was being forgetful, I suppose.

Jimenez: "Dude, I told you to throw a fastball!"
Copeland: "Oh, my bad man. I totally forgot. So I just threw whatever came to mind."
Jimenez: "What? Well, let's go for the fastball next time."
*Copeland throws a strike, walks off the mound*
Jimenez: "Hey, hey! Where are you going?"
Copeland: "That wasn't a strikeout? Oh wait I forgot how many strikes there were."
Jimenez: "How...? Look, just throw that pitch again, ok?"
Copeland: "Sir, I admire your odd-looking yet stylish headgear. But who are you? Why are you talking to me?"

Priceless Oceanbound.

With a low pitch count, you have energy to throw a 10-15 pitch side after the game to work on specific pitches. But honestly I do not know. I too am curious.

Lets look a bit deeper at Daniel Norris...
HR per 9 IP: 0 this year, 0.6 last and 0.8 the year before.  Very good and improving.
BB/9: 2.6 this year, 4.6 last, 3.8 the year before - major improvement, is it for real?
SO/9: 10.4 this, 9.9 last, 9.1 before.  Excellent all the way but improving each year.

Line Drives: 14 total in 9 starts, 45 IP.  2.8 per 9 IP which is excellent.
Popups: 6 total, decent but not 'wow'
Has yet to give up more than 1 ER in a game this year, 2 runs total in a game.

The Jays in Dunedin have a 2.67 R/G allowed.  That is a 1968 number.  2nd is Milwaukee with a 3.25, then a 3.71 from the Tigers with all other clubs at 4+ (4.17 league average).  The Jays are the only ones under 100 walks, lead with 368 K's, HR/9 is middle of the pack (0.4 vs league average of 0.5). 

I suspect Norris is there until the mid-season break (once the Jays clinch a playoff slot).   Norris is 2 years younger than Boyd (0.29 ERA in A+)Taylor Cole is next on the 'wow' list at 2.39 ERA (24 years old) with Ben White's 2.87 next after that.  Kendall Graveman is doing OK with a 3.00 in his 4 starts but Jesse Hernandez is the weak link with a 3.63 ERA in 8 starts.  I suspect Norris and Cole are in line for promotions mid-season if at all possible with Scott Copeland (4.44 ERA in AA) and Casey Lawrence (4.04) being in danger there.  Boyd's 8.36 ERA in AA is scary, but his numbers are good outside of H/9 so odds are he'll smooth out soon. McGuire and Sanchez both could move to AAA at some point as both are sub 3 in ERA now but with K rates in the 7's for both the Jays will probably wait, especially with Sanchez walking more than 5 per game.

By the way, the Fisher Cats lost 7-6 last night so the affiliates were actually 2-1.  Today, they are ahead 3-1 going to the bottom of the ninth courtesy of a Ryan Schimpf 2 run dinger in the 8th.

Matt Boyd had his first good double A outing today, a 6 inning 1-hitter with 1 walk and 4 Ks. 

Shi Davidi has posted a minor league report. Notable in there is that Sean Nolin has suffered a setback with his groin injury, he will not be back anytime soon.

I asked Jason Parks from Baseball Prospectus if Pompey was the best kept prospect secret today and this was his response:

@HodgieYYC He's up there. We just put out a scouting report on him. Could be a 1st division type. Legit.

— Jason Parks (@ProfessorParks) May 22, 2014

The scouting report Parks mentions can be found here.

Also notable in Davidi's report (at least to me) is the fact that Taylor Cole used the weighted ball program, presumably this past off-season. Little has been said of the program this season and I was wondering whether its usage had started to trickle down to the Jay's minor league system at all.

So, he has a good arm too.  Bill James once said of Amos Otis that he might have been the only player who you could put a positive beside every part of his game.  Maybe that is true of Pompey.  According to BBRef, AO was 5'11", 165 lbs- the same size as Pompey.

Ugly's Hot/Not Sheet

(note: gose was on the NOT list based on his aaa numbers, but i removed him based on his mlb stint. Still not enough to get him on the hot list yet, though.)

FLAMING HOT

AAA RHP M.Stroman (23): 31.2ip, 2.00fip
A+ LHP D.Norris (21): 45.0ip, 1.74fip
A+ OF D.Pompey (21): 184pa, 168wrc+


HOT

AAA RHP L.Hendriks (25): 48.2ip, 2.98fip
AAA LHP S.Nolin (24): 40.0ip, 3.23fip
AAA OF K.Pillar (25): 151pa, 123wrc+
AA OF M.Crouse (23): 138pa, 128wrc+
A+ OF D.Smith (21): 192pa, 147wrc+
A 1B M.Dean (21): 133pa, 133wrc+
A OF D.Loveless (21): 154pa, 133wrc+
A C S.Nessy (21): 113pa, 128wrc+
A LHP S.Dawson (20): 14.0ip, 3.13fip


NOT

AA RHP A.Sanchez (21): 48.1ip, 4.41fip
AA C A.Jimenez (24): 94pa, 77wrc+
AA 3B A.Burns (23): 176pa, 77wrc+
A OF D.Davis (21): 189pa, 81wrc+
A SS D.Lugo (19): 157pa, 76wrc+
A RHP T.Robson (21): 31.2ip, 4.46fip
A RHP C.DeJong (20): 36.1ip, 4.49fip
A RHP A.Tirado (19): 29.2ip, 5.69fip
A LHP J.Labourt (20): 14.0ip, 7.92fip

Pompey is off to a fine start. I'd forgotten how nice it is to have a farm system in somewhat blossoming after last season.

Is it time yet to talk about Mike Crouse? He's OPSing .818 in double A, which is entirely respectable for a 23 year old. He's 6'4", 215 lbs so could have a bit more power to him.

This article by Bob Elliott has comments from an AL evaluator on some Jays' prospects:

http://www.torontosun.com/2014/05/21/blue-jays-prospect-andy-burns-journey-to-the-blue-jays

Ryan Goins is 3-4 tonight pushing his average up to .325 with a good W/K. 

This is the best it has felt to be a Jays fan in quite a while.

The ML club is doing well, with a lot more good news than bad. The team is in first place (!) in the division. Cabrera, Bautista and EE have been absolutely raking. Navarro has been a substantial upgrade over Arencibia, both offensively and defensively. Francisco has been excellent, deepening the lineup at minimal cost. Buehrle has been pitching like a Cy Young candidate. The surgically-repaired Hutchison has been really good. Gose has been getting it done. Lawrie has rebounded nicely from his dreadful start. Tolleson has been doing well at 2B. Janssen is back on the mound and has a 0.00 ERA. McGowan is reasonably healthy and looks like he could be a valuable bullpen arm.

(I still think the team needs one more good starting pitcher, but that's likely a conversation for the second half of July.)

There have been some promising developments on the farm (Norris and Pompey, in particular, have gone from "interesting" to "whoa"). McGuire and Boyd have been nice surprises. The two high picks this June could help boost the system's prospect ranking.

Lind also deserves a shout-out: this year he's hitting 319/410/528 (wRC+ 156).

Agreed on all this greenfrog.

One or three troubling signs too:

Lawrie's hitting has gone south again.
No longterm good second baseman on the roster.
Happ and Whoever are starters 4 and 5 at the moment.

I think now's the time to fix these problems.  My solutions:

Pull the trigger on Samartzija.  It will cost a lot but WS rings are more valuable.  We've already made our bets anyway -- just go in all the way.
Dangle Lind for a decent second baseman.  I don't know who -- but anyone who can OPS near 700 with good defense. 
Get Lawrie back on 3rd base so he can focus on his hitting. He needs to do that.

Carrot, I think the Cubs will wait until about a week before the deadline before they finally move Samardzija (assuming they get an offer they like). Lots of teams will want him. Chicago can basically sit back and let the bidding war escalate. Right now the ask is probably something like Sanchez, Norris and Pompey.

If the price on Samardzija is too prohibitive, you could always look at guys like McCarthy & Arroyo on the Diamondbacks. They just need a reliable starter who can keep the offense in the game over 5-6 innings, not necessarily an overvalued stuff guy.

You know I would like Samardzija because I think he could have a 1992 David Cone kind of impact on this year's version of the Jays.  If I recall David Cone cost the 92 Jays Jeff Kent. And in my view totally worth it. I'm not saying greenfrog that we settle for your package -- but I think some prospect pain is warranted.  Samardzija could help this team go all the way.  92-93 I think your suggestion is good too but I would call that plan B. 

If the package for Samardzija was something like Stroman, Nolin, and Smith Jr. (or someone out of that Lansing rotation) I would do it. Note, I'm sure most of you would say the Cubs wouldn't do that deal in a million years.

Stroman doesn't scare me as prospect as much as Sanchez does. There's legit ACE potential in Sanchez. Stroman--as I reported at draft time--is always going to struggle with the long ball. For me he's a bullpen arm. You throw him in a rotation and there's more of an opportunity that he elevates his fastball.

"....The team is in first place (!) in the division...."

The Jays are now in first place by a full game.  And if they'd had a bit of luck from the bullpen earlier this year, they could be 2 or 3 games ahead of the pack by now.  It's what a few of us said before the season began: this team still has the potential to make the playoffs, despite the lack of high-profile acquisitions in the off-season.  (But how much better would they have been by now if the owners had added a couple million dollars to the offer to Santana?  Or if the Braves had not suffered a pitching injury at precisely the wrong moment in the Santana negotiations?)

A lot can still go wrong.  Baseball is too unpredictable to have any confidence that the Jays are going to stay in first place.  But it could happen.  The results so far are not a fluke.  The top performances on the team (Buehrle, Hutchison, Encarnacion, Bautista, Cabrera, Lind) don't look like a fluke if you examine their recent careers (excluding 2013 for Cabrera and excluding a couple bad years for Lind and focusing on minor-league performance for Hutchison).   Perhaps Francisco or Thole might regress, but that won't kill the offense.

And there are still some things that could improve.  The bullpen is vastly stronger now, with Janssen and McGowan back in the pen, so we are unlikely to see the collapses that led to 3 or 4 bad losses in the first month.  Lawrie and Reyes have room for improvement.  (And Reyes of course has been much better in the past couple of weeks already.)  Rasmus will return from injury, adding more power to the lineup.  The 4th outfielder, whether it is Gose or Pillar, will be an improvement on Sierra.  The rotation, too, could get stronger.  If Dickey returns to his second-half form of 2013, the rotation will be better.  The Jays are still working on the 5th starter, but there are enough plausible options (Hendriks, Stroman, or even a new acquisition) to suggest that the weakest part of the rotation could be strengthened.

If you want a chuckle, take a look at the Batters Box thread of just three weeks ago, during the Kansas City series, when the thread was filled with doom and gloom. Some people here were debating whether the Jays should break up the team, trade Buehrle and start looking for a rebuild.  A lot can change in 3 weeks.

Lind is raking because they're finally platooning him.

As long as Francisco is hitting, I don't worry too much about Lawrie.

They need to drop Rodgers for a bench player.

Ideally, I'd try to squeeze Shields out of Kansas City. Might be possible if the Royals drop below 500. 

Another interesting question is whether Kevin Seitzer deserves some of the credit for extracting the full potential from the Jays offense.  Comments by John Gibbons last night suggest that Seitzer might be a factor.  Here's how Shi Davidi put it in his report, with Gibbons quoted after Davidi's comment:

Rather than trying to blow things up with one swing, Reyes, Bautista and Encarnacion each punched balls into right field to take what the opposition was giving them.  “That’s how you extend innings and pick up that single RBI along the way,” said Gibbons. “It’s always nice to hit home runs and we’re very capable of that, but those things don’t happen all the time. It’s a product of a good approach that (hitting coach Kevin) Seitzer has been hammering these guys on...."

As for Samardzija, don't let the ERA fool you.  He's the same pitcher he was, but just hasn't given up home runs at his usual rate so far.  He is nothing like David Cone in quality, but he would be a useful addition to this club.  It would be frustrating if the club gave up a lot for him because Kazmir is probably a better pitcher...

Rany Jazayerli of BP and a Royals fan made the argument on his blog last year that the Royals' offence went south after the firing of Seitzer.

I agree not to be fooled by Samardzija's era this yesr, but at the same time he's still a solid #2 pitcher. Since he became a fulltime SP in 2012: 6.3ip/gs, 3.71era, 3.55fip, 3.43xfip, 3.53siera.

Not quite an Ace but still very good. The worry there would be the switch to the AL, which would bump those numbers up at least a bit, and maybe a lot.

There's a better pitcher available in Price, who over the ame time frame has done this: 6.9ip/gs, 3.12era, 3.06fip, 3.10xfip, 3.17siera. True Ace numbers there.

But then again Price has imo bigger question marks. Even though he's younger he's got way more miles on his arm. His velo has dropped from 95.5 to 93,5 to 92.8 the last two years, which means his higher babip and hr rate this year might not be just bad luck. He's also put up those numbers in an exteme pitcher's park in front of elite defense....though to fair his road numbers are still ace-like.

Price also probably costs more in trade assets and contract extension.

There was a groundball single Melky Cabrera had up the middle the other night where right afterwards he looked into the dugout and Seitzer was smiling and shaking his head towards him, as if to say "Nono Melky, you got lucky but we both know that was a bad approach by swinging at a ball out of the zone".