I don't get the "No indicator of quality on their site"

Pearson 60
Martin 60
Groshans 55
SWR 55
Manoah 50
Kirk 50
Martinez 50
Moreno 50
Hidalgo 50
Kloffenstein 50
Van Eyk 50
Pardinho 50
Lopez and 6 other 45
The rest of the top 30 is ranked 40 (I don't think they go lower than that)

MLB updates towards the end of spring training.
Maybe later this year if they want to look at the delayed minor camp.

By no indicator of quality I mean they just list players and say nothing that I could see - where did you see the 60/50/etc. scores? Ah, now I see - if you open the player up then you get the scores. Kind of user unfriendly, but it is there.

Prospects list are nebulous at the best of times and with no season last year more subjective than ever - I'm okay with fangraphs tough assessment of the Jays system as 2019 was very meh and there were a number of quality graduations - I'm more optimistic though I'm concerned about SWR's lower velocity and hope surgery is not in his near future.

Fangraphs says the Jays will end up near the very bottom of the farm rankings, which seems odd.

I know. What do we know about the other systems? Not much really. But we do know how this year's crew compares with Blue Jay groups of years past (maybe 20 years or more)nd this one is right up there near the top.

FanGraphs saying the Jays have a poorly ranked system right now seems weird. BA has 6 Jays in their top 100 Those players are... Nate Pearson (14), Austin Martin (19), Jordan Groshans (34), Simeon Woods-Richardson (69), Alejandro Kirk (70) and Orelvis Martinez (96). Not a weak group either with 2 top 20's and another top 50. Only Martiez is in the bottom quarter. To have that be lowly ranked would be to put tons of emphasis on non top 100 guys which would be foolish imo. With prospects you want the guys who will be future All-Stars, not future bench warmers. I wouldn't trade 100 bench warmers for 1 star.

Btw, with 30 teams, an average team should have 3-4 players on the list, not 6. So for the Jays to be ranked below average they'd need to be extremely weak after those guys and at least 10 teams would need to be incredible on their sub top 100 guys.

Someday I might give in and get a membership with BA but not today. The Athletic covers me nicely for that.

Hmm... FanGraphs has a few other teams done...

• Boston: 2 50's, 7 45/45+'s, 23 40/40+'s, 14 35+'s
• White Sox: 1 60 (Andrew Vaughn), 2 55's, 1 50, 1 45, 19 40/40+'s, 10 35+'s
• Cleveland: 7 50's, 10 45/45+'s, 22 40/40+'s, 10 35+'s
• Twins: 2 60's (Alex Kirilloff, Royce Lewis), 1 55, 4 50's, 4 45's, 19 40/40+'s, 9 35+'s
• Reds: 1 55, 3 50's, 6 45/45+'s, 13 40/40+'s, 13 35+'s
• Dodgers: 1 55, 4 50's, 10 45's, 20 40/40+'s, 14 35+'s
• Jays: 1 60 (Pearson), 1 55, 5 50's, 2 45/45+'s, 16 40/40+'s, 14 35+'s.

Assuming I counted right the Jays have more 50-60's (7) than LAD, Reds, Boston, and the White Sox. Same as Twins & Cleveland Unless they are doing a bottom to top release of farms (unlikely, normally has been more or less random it seems and they appear to love Cleveland). So lets try a point system or two. Using a simple scale of 6 points for a 60, 5 for a 55, 4 for a 50, 3 for a 45, 2 for a 40, and 1 for a 35 we get the Jays ranked #5 of 7 (Boston is 4th thanks to so many 40's). An adjusted scale of 25-15-10-5-3-1 points puts the Jays into 4th. A 3rd really tough method where 60 is worth 50 points and you cut the points in half for each notch down (ie: 55 is worth 25 points, down to 1.56 points for a 35+) then the Jays jump to 3rd tied with the Dodgers, Twins move into #1, Cleveland #2 (#1 by both other methods), Boston drops to 6th, Reds dead last (White Sox climb from last to 5th).

Yeah, I kept adjusting until I could see the Jays near the top. Sue me. A more extreme system gets them to 2nd (100 points for a 60, drop by 60% for each level after that and you get Twins, Jays, White Sox, Cleveland, Boston dead last by a good margin). So the question is how much do you rank a top prospect over lower ones? Would you trade Nate Pearson for 2 Austin Martin's or 4 Simeon Woods Richardson's? Would you trade him for 16 Kevin Smith's? Or for 32 T.J. Zeuch's? Or is he worth a package of Chavez Young, TJ Zeuch, Nick Frasso, Yennsy Diaz, Hobie Harris, and Curtis Taylor? In 2019 Vlad was a 70Fernando Tatis Jr. a 65 - how many TJ Zeuch's would it take to get a prospect at those levels? Would any number of prospects at that level make you pull the trigger? There is the challenge. I suspect a geometric scale is needed here - making it so a 70 is near impossible to match up, but a 60 can be and a 50 is easy to make a deal with while 35/45's are almost interchangeable.

Maybe once Pearson and Martin graduate, but that's true for a lot of teams.
Also, you can argue that the next drafts are not going to be good as the Jays is a competitive team not afraid to lose draft picks and international money by signing top prospects.
That's still a far cry to ranking the system near the bottom now.
Would they lose a lot of money if they called the Yankees system weak? I wonder.

Vlad (non prospect) is younger than Kirk. Kirk played 5 of 9 games vs NYY and did well hitting. SSS and cherry picking. I don't know when he 1st appeared on major prospect lists but he most likely will graduate to non prospect fast.

Every day there are guys talking on MLB.com? Analysts? One was raving about Kirk for 2021 based on actual game results (2020) not projections.

The minor league gurus do a sort of redraft a few years later and Bo moved into the top 5 selections for his draft year. I think that was a bit premature but I think they were impressed by his 2019 debut.

These prospect evaluators dwell more on future projections than reviewing past projections probably because they are very busy.

As others have mentioned, elite prospects are worth way more than pretty good prospects so a team like the Jays that IMO has 8-9 very good to great prospects (Moreno/Hiraldo area) can't have a not great system. Other teams probably have more depth but I also don't believe the Jays have poor depth. Guys like Brown, Jimenez, Beltre, De Castro, Lopz, etc...are definitely interesting prospects. As Mike said, when comparing to other years' prospects, this year seems good.

Also Biggio was not on top 100s because they didn't like his defense.
Yet, he's been playing all over like a glove first super utility.

What bothers me is that the Jays could have to overpay in trades because good prospects are underrated.
Kinda forces Atkins to hold unto guys until they show what they can really do.
Maybe that's for the better?

2021 is picking up where 2020 left off. First Don Sutton and now Hank Aaron.

"What bothers me is that the Jays could have to overpay in trades because good prospects are underrated."

I don't think teams are looking at Fangraphs for their prospect evaluations.

There goes the Hammer.
I don't remember him directly, but I sure heard of him.

I remember watching Aaron's 715th career homer off Al Downing (to pass Ruth) like it was yesterday.

My memory of Sep 29, 1973 in a typical 1970's household of one television set goes something like this. Yours truly, baseball fan, wants to watch what could be a historic moment. Yours truly has a sister who too often got her way and the channel was changed so that the inanity known as The Partridge Family could be broadcast into our rec room instead (I verified with epguides.com that an episode did indeed air that night). Yes, David Cassidy won and Hank Aaron lost. What would Dante have said about that? Maybe added a tenth circle?

Just a few days ago, I was mentioning that I was a pacifist with a few exceptions.  The early 1970s TV set wars with David Cassidy over Hank Aaron would certainly have been one of them and my then burgeoning political awareness might have found a voice.  Fortunately, I had a younger brother who was not the least bit interested in the Partridge Family. 

I stand corrected. It was April 8, 1974 that Aaron hit his homerun off Al Downing.

I do stand by the rest of my memory, though concede that it is on shaky ground.

You can watch the Vin Scully call of Aaron's homer. I had forgotten that it took place in Atlanta.  Scully's comment, about the standing ovation given in the deep South to a black man for beating the record of a white icon, resonates  with the election of the first black Senator in Georgia this month. 

Hopefully our windy lore expert has his sleeves rolled up. Aaron's is a hell of a bio.

Aside: my sister's lawyers have informed me that the HR, having been hit at 9:10 PM, would likely not have coincided with a Partridge Family airing, a family-friendly show more likely to have aired at 8 PM. My case for four-plus decades of animus grows weaker.

One of these days I'll try to do a post-mortem on old Jay top prospect lists. Which was really the strongest? From 1984 to present they have been ranked by BA (7th in 1984, 18th in 1985, 8th in 1986, #1 in 1987 - weird). 1987 had a near HOF'er in David Wells, a few future All-Star's in Sharperson, Hentgen, Ward and lots of guys who were solid regulars (Whiten, Hill, Derek Bell, Borders, Berroa, Stottlemyre, Horsman, Timlin, and others). Of course at the time Wells was pretty much ignored while Sil Campusano was the hot shot of the day and Rob Ducey got tons of attention thanks to a A/AA season of 318/375/536 (still annoyed he didn't get a real full-time shot - he was born in Toronto, raised in Cambridge just like I was, started baseball in his mid-teens like I did, sadly I had no skill vs his extreme skill).

In 1989 they start listing who made the top 100 lists (Jays #2 system that year, Olerud, Hill, Alex Sanchez, and Derek Bell the top prospects - Derek Bell was super-hyped shortly after that) Looking back at 1989 you can see Ed Sprague was underrated, Jeff Kent grossly underrated as he and Carlos Delgado both had their first pro seasons that year. I suspect that will be the strongest year in Jays history for the farm with Olerud, Delgado, and Kent all near HOF'ers, plus Pat Hentgen and a solid closer in Mike Timlin.

From the LA Times is an account of Aaron's chase of Ruth's home run record:

" For most of the 1973 season, as he closed in on the record, instead of staying with the rest of the team on the road, Aaron roomed in another hotel, alone, under an alias. And in Atlanta, instead of living at home, he bunked in an old storage room at Atlanta- Fulton County Stadium, where teammates brought him food. At one point, FBI agents were dispatched to Fisk University in Nashville where his daughter's life had been threatened.

Through it all, Aaron persevered, and when he finally surpassed Ruth's mark, he said," I don't want them to forget Ruth. I just want them to remember me."

Jays trade Hector Perez to Reds for cash or PTBNL. The Jays need to 40-man room and Perez never developed. Fine risk for the Reds to take but Jays are competing so no room for these sorts of players.

Jays actually don't have a lot of garbage at the end of the 40-man like they did in previous years. I have to think Fisher will be gone soon. Tice is probably replicable. Davis might get through waivers. Jays probably should trade a catcher though. Either Moreno as part of a package for a very good player or McGuire or Adams to free up some 40-man room. You just don't want to be carrying 5 catchers on the 40-man for very long because it hampers you elsewhere. (i.e. Jays have 5 C, 6 IF, and 6 OF on the 40-man)

Hopefully our windy lore expert has his sleeves rolled up.

No kidding. Be with you shortly.

I wonder what Fangraphs will think of Toronto's system now they have to remove Perez from the list.

They will hold on to Tice. I think Waguespack and Fisher are the most likely deletions at this point. Trading a catcher makes sense if the right deal is there.

Even without the right deal. Many teams don't have a decent catching prospect.
Adams is around 20 in the Jays ranking and MLB ready.
McGuire is solid defensively and bats left.
Either should return something but if they want to start Kirk in AAA, they might prefer McGuire as backup.

Fisher should be gone already but Davis is probably the ideal 4/5 OF type for a slightly expanded roster (although a LH Davis would be even better). On merit, Waguespack might be due to be culled but he's exactly the kind of swing starter/reliever and quad A pitcher that will be useful for a CV impacted season so I suspect to see more rather than less of him.

Has the second PTBNL from the Stripling trade been announced yet?

Will there be one? Kendall Williams by himself is more than fair.

For me it's pretty simple - adding a 4+war type pitcher like Bauer for only money makes us an instant contender, and arguably the 3rd best team behind NYY and LAD.

I think San Diego is on that level right now.

I don't think Bauer makes Toronto the 4th best team in baseball, either. However, he doesn't necessarily need to do that to be a worthwhile addition in free agency (I'm speaking in terms of monetary cost.....his personality is a whole separate matter).

I think scottt is right. I don't remember any announcement, but Stripling's page at BBRef shows Williams as completing the trade in the transactions section.

I hope Shapiro has figured out the budget for the next 5 years.

Grichuk at $10 mil for 3 years is ok. He seems to be able to hit 25 hr each year.

Ryu at $20 mil for 3 more years is a good contract.

Springer $25 mil for 6 years is Iffy for the last 2/3 years.

If they get Bauer for 4 or 5 years it is probably ok.

I'm sure the team has a chart up showing projected salaries for the next 10 years. I'd be surprised if they didn't.

Cot's has the next 5 years but outside of 2021 no year is at $80 million even with benefits factored in ($16+ mil a year). But it doesn't factor in likely arbitration costs.

Doing a quick thumbnail from that base and using a 75% raise every year for arbitration, with a first year matching Hernandez' $4,325,000 (so Hernandez goes from that to $7.5 to $13.2 before free agency) for Biggio, Vlad, Bo, Jansen, Tellez. A base of $1 million for the other guys (Borucki, Fisher, Thornton, Waguespack, Romano, etc.) going to $1.75 to $3.062 etc. Gurriel in 2024 at $10.5 (75% raise over his 2023 salary). Far from perfect, but a way to get an idea of the future (some of those guys will drop off, others do better). Dropping guys as they become free agents (Roark, Ray, Yates, Yamaguchi, Chatwood after 2021, Stripling after 2022, Hernandez & Grichuk & Ryu after 2023) with minimum for all others, and you get a payroll from $102 mil in 2022 to $132 mil in 2024 (when a batch of the kids hit their last year pre-free agency). So lots of room for growth there. A 5 year deal for $30 per to Bauer (for example) would push 2024 to $164 mil which is pushing the Jays payroll limits today but might be safe then if they are contenders. Plus most of that is in arbitration guys who you can dump if they aren't performing.

Note for long term thinking: after 2024 the following are free agents: Gurriel, Dolis, Borucki, Fisher, Jansen, Tellez, Thornton. I'd bet the Jays are planning around that right now with their prospects - wanting as many as possible to be ready for 2024/2025 to step in and let them waive good bye to those guys. The next year Vlad & Biggio & Bo among others would hit free agency. This years draft and IFA's are to replace them if needed.

Chase Anderson gone and Roark after 2021. I think Tulo is still on the books for $16 mil this year. So safe budgeting for the next 5 years unless spending crazy money.

Will look better financially when we start winning in 162 game schedules.

I'm guessing that they had the choice of Williams or two lower prospects.
That or somebody is taking forever to make his mind.

Interesting structure on Springer's deal, as there's a $10-million signing bonus. He receives $22 million salary this year and a $28 million in 2022. He then receives $22.5 million for the last 4 years.

That has no bearing for luxury tax purposes, but it creates more flexibility in terms of payroll when Bichette, Guerrero and company begin to get more expensive. Also, the signing bonus protects some of Springer's salary if this season gets reduced and salaries pro-rated in any way.

You can't really project arbitration salaries years ahead of time.
Fangraphs has the Jays at 115M for the year. Springer appears to be loaded for next year. Maybe he was worried about the season being shortened.  29.7M next year but down to 24.1 after that.
2.2M for minor league players on the 40 roster.
15.5M in players benefits for a Luxury Tax payroll of 128.7M
Players benefits include health insurance, transportation, meal money and other non-salary payment for all players on the 40 roster.

I think Tulo is still on the books for $16 mil this year.

Nah, just the $4 million buyout.

Scottt - more an exercise in estimation. You need to guesstimate or you are going into 2022 and beyond blind. The Jays have roughly $150 mil a year available for the payroll, all else being equal. I figure they can push to $175 or so if they make the playoffs and have fans in the stands. So, based on that and guessing the core kids will work their way to $10-$20 mil a year via arbitration I tried to estimate the Jays payroll for the Springer years. Not perfect of course, but gives a ballpark estimate and shows they have room for Bauer but if they do that then they are tight in those later years potentially with enough room to add one more star. So if they blow $30+ a year on Bauer they better be damn sure he is the right piece as he might be the final big one. I guarantee the Jays estimate arbitration years for every player on a regular basis with 101 different factors.

My thing with Bauer (besides his personality) is I have no idea what I'd be getting. He's got seven seasons in an MLB rotation. In two of them he pitched like a god (ERA+ of 196 and 276). And in the other five he was slightly above average (ERA+ of 94, 95, 106, 109, 106.) In principle, I wouldn't want to pay him like a Cy Young winner when he's a solid #3 starter. The Jays just went through that with Dickey.

But hey - it's not my money, Rogers has a license to print the stuff, so what do I care?

Pirates are looking likely to trade Taillon in next few days and he's an interesting pitcher I'd be happy to take a risk on if the cost isn't too high.

Big difference between Dickey and Bauer is Dickey cost d'Arnaud and Syndergard. Bauer costs a 3rd round pick and some international FA money. From the Jays website: "A team that neither exceeded the luxury tax in the preceding season nor receives revenue sharing will lose its second-highest selection in the following year's Draft, as well as $500,000 from its international bonus pool for the upcoming signing period. If it signs two such players, it will also forfeit its third-highest remaining pick and an additional $500,000." So Bauer costs his salary plus $500k international bonus money and a 3rd round pick. I think that isn't too much. They don't list what signing 3 of them would cost (if the Jays went nuts and got Realmuto and Bauer which ain't gonna happen).

Jays have had 6 3rd rounders reach 10 WAR, and 2 more crack 5. If you don't crack 5 WAR in your career you aren't really worth drafting imo. Now two of those guys were 'wow' in John Olerud (79th overall pick, dropped to 3rd round due to being thought to be unsignable) and Jimmy Key (most felt he didn't throw hard enough or something, 56th overall, 2nd in round 2). The other 10's (all between 10 and 14 WAR) were Shawn Marcum, Adam Lind, Jake Marisnick, and David Weathers. Chris Stynes and Greg Myers also cracked 5 WAR but didn't reach 10. Note: Anthony Alford was a 3rd rounder, Trent Palmer was last years. Patrick Murphy from 2013 was the last Jays 3rd rounder to reach the majors. This is out of 47 players. So roughly a 1 in 24 chance of getting a 'wow', 1 in 6 roughly of getting a guy who will have a real ML career (more than a cup of coffee).

Kudos to Ben Cherington for how he is selling off the pieces in the Pirates rebuild - lots of lower lottery picks with upside which is what I wish the Jays had done instead of getting near ready prospects with limited upside - The Pirates haul may not work out but I really like that approach - Cherington rebuild approach > Atkins.

EE, Sogard, Stroman, Hudson, Granderson, Martin were for lower guys with upside.

Let's skip Donaldson.
Pillar was a mix, got Juan de Paula, along with Alen Hanson and Derek Law.
Happ, Biagini/Sanchez didn't fare well.
However the trades of Hutchison, Loup, Phelps, Diaz and Liriano have worked out.
Conner Greene and Leone for Grichuk was fine.
Woodman for Diaz was fine.
Olivarez for Solarte was not great. Olivares has struggled so far but he's only 24. (Will probably start in AAA for KC.)
Too early to tell.

The Pirates will be bad for years to come so, obviously, they prefer younger guys.