The 2016 Toronto Blue Jays Minor League Handbook

By Jay Blue

The 2016 edition of the Toronto Blue Jays Minor League Handbook updates all of the players in the Blue Jays’ minor league system and adds profiles for all of the 2015 draftees as well as the newest players signed for the minor league system. We have also updated the sections for each of the Blue Jays’ minor league teams including schedules and coaching staffs and have included updated depth charts.

Included in the 2016 edition are:

Histories and profiles of all seven North American Blue Jays affiliates including the Buffalo Bisons, New Hampshire Fisher Cats, Dunedin Blue Jays, Lansing Lugnuts, Vancouver Canadians, Bluefield Blue Jays and Gulf Coast League Blue Jays
Over 250 player profiles including every player anticipated to play in the Blue Jays’ minor league system in 2015
A new essay by author Jay Blue, “Dearly Departed,” featuring interviews with Jays’ minor leaguers
Ticket, travel and city information to help you plan any trips to see the Baby Jays play
Complete 2016 minor league schedules
Broadcast information to help you follow along with the teams and players from wherever you are
Minor league depth charts
A 2015 draft review

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jay Blue
• Release date: Apr 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310486746

Jay Blue

A lifelong Toronto Blue Jays fan, Jay Blue started blogging about the Jays when he was living in Berlin, Germany. He founded his own blog, Blue Jays from Away, to write about developments with his home town team, focusing on the Jays' minor league system. He now gets broaden his prospecting ways as a co-editor of FanSided's Grading on the Curve and writing as a staff writer for Jays Journal. When he's not watching baseball, he is usually on the diamond umpiring or he's pursuing his research interests in the field of ethnomusicology.

Book preview

Table of Contents

Introduction

- Stats

- How to Follow the Games

- About this book

Essay: The Curious Case of Ian Parmley

By Jay Blue

Essay: Dearly Departed

By Jay Blue

2015 Draft Review

- Drafted Players

- Non-Drafted Free Agents (NDFA)

- International Free Agents (IFA)

2016 Toronto Blue Jays Minor League Affiliates

Buffalo Bisons

- 2016 Coaching Staff

- Playoff Procedures

- 2016 Schedule

- Website

- Directions and Parking

- About Coca-Cola Field

- Broadcast

- Local Colour

- Other Notes

New Hampshire Fisher Cats

- 2016 Coaching Staff

- Playoff Procedures

- 2016 Schedule

- Website

- Directions and Parking

- About Northeast Delta Dental Stadium

- Broadcast

- Local Colour

Dunedin Blue Jays

- 2016 Coaching Staff

- Playoff Procedures

- 2016 Schedule

- Website

- Directions and Parking

- About Florida Auto Exchange Stadium

- Broadcast

- Local Colour

Lansing Lugnuts

- 2016 Coaching Staff

- Playoff Procedures

- 2016 Schedule

- Website

- Directions and Parking

- About Cooley Law School Stadium

- Broadcast

- Local Colour

Vancouver Canadians

- 2016 Coaching Staff

- Playoff Procedures

- 2016 Schedule

- Website

- Directions and Parking

- About Scotiabank Field at Nat Bailey Stadium

- Broadcast

- Local Colour

Bluefield Blue Jays

- 2016 Coaching Staff

- Playoff Procedures

- 2016 Schedule

- Website

- Directions and Parking

- About Bowen Field

- Broadcast

- Local Colour

Gulf Coast League Blue Jays

- 2016 Coaching Staff

- Playoff Procedures

- 2016 Schedule

- Website

- Directions and Parking

- About the Bobby Mattick Training Facility

- Broadcast

- Local Colour

Dominican Summer League Blue Jays

- 2016 Coaching Staff

- 2016 Schedule

Player Profiles

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

Y

Appendix 1: Positional Depth Chart

Appendix 2: Glossary

Appendix 3: Top Prospect Lists

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Connect with the Author

Introduction: The More Things Change . . .

It was a year of change for the Toronto Blue Jays organization with a trade deadline that generated (and will continue to generate) reams of discussion. In what turned out to be the final year of the Alex Anthopoulos era, the Blue Jays traded away a ton of minor league prospects, leveraging the future for the present. The Jays made the playoffs for the first time in 22 years, won a series, and still have baseball's most fearsome offense intact for 2016. The minor league system, however, emerged from the season thoroughly depleted with almost all of the club's top-tier talent gone.

In addition to the changes on the farm, the Blue Jays have begun a transformation from the top down with the effects still to be felt completely. Mark Shapiro was hired to be the new club President and he brought in Ross Atkins to take over the General Manager role vacated under mysterious circumstances by Alex Anthopoulos. Shapiro has created a whole new division of High Performance, headed by Angus Mumford, while also hiring Gil Kim to be the club's new Director, Player Development. There haven't been any major changes at the levels below but it is likely that the new regime is going to start to shift their philosophies in the coming years.

Our third edition of the Toronto Blue Jays Minor League Handbook is going to try to take you through the changes that the Blue Jays have made in the minors. The 2016 Toronto Blue Jays Minor League Handbook is giving you more of what you've come to know and love about our publication. We've updated hundreds of player profiles and added new ones for all of the players drafted and signed by the Blue Jays over the past 12 months. We've also given you the story of the Blue Jays' minor league clubs and their 2015 seasons. Don't forget the draft review, schedules, coaching staff information and, of course, our appendices!

We've also got a couple of essays with one about the curious situation of outfielder Ian Parmley and our feature essay, Dearly Departed which builds on the theme of change that permeated the 2015 season.

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, you can visit 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 photos and video (where available). We'll be updating the video and photos throughout the season while adding exclusive scouting reports to players' pages and to the Premium Content section. Readers have the opportunity to purchase both a subscription to the Blue Jays from Away Premium Content section as well as the 2016 Toronto Blue Jays Minor League Handbook for one low price. Of course, both can be enjoyed separately.

Every player, whether he's from Latin America (or Belgium), Mississippi, British Columbia or even Toronto, in the Toronto Blue Jays' organization has one thing in common: a scout or executive saw some talent in him and offered him a professional contract. While the stories in this book have a common theme, you'll find players who came to the organization in a variety of different ways. One player was drafted after returning to college following a Mormon mission to Toronto. One player was completely out of the game for several years before deciding to give it another try. Another spent two years in the Army after a stellar professional debut. Some bounced around organizations until they found a home with Toronto. Others bounced around community colleges and NCAA universities until they were drafted. Some players are rebounding from injury, hoping for one more shot at the major leagues before they call it a career. Sure, there are tropes and patterns but every player's story is unique and that's why we're here.

One word that we don’t like to use is prospect. Sure, some players have a greater ability to make an impact a major league level than others because of their physical gifts but we’ve seen too many prospects who were unable to live up to their expectations. Whether because of injuries, the inability to adjust at the higher levels or just going off the rails, many highly-touted prospects have disappointed. Conversely, players have emerged completely unheralded to make the major league team and make big impacts. That’s why we don’t compile our own Top Prospect list. We’re trying to avoid creating a hierarchy of players within the system. We do provide you with other lists in our appendix but we like to think of all the players as being on (more-or-less) equal footing.

But the reality of minor league baseball is that they’re not on equal footing at all. Players who get more money from the club in the form of signing bonuses will be given much more rope while late draft picks and non-drafted free agents (NDFAs) will have to prove themselves to a higher standard over and over again in order to remain employed. Teams are reluctant to give up on players in whom they have invested hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of dollars. As we’ll see in our Dearly Departed essay, one part of being a professional baseball player is that you’re always competing for that spot at the level above you and competing against younger, faster, stronger players who have been more recently acquired, possibly at a greater cost to the organization. Players can be released at any point or they can be traded. And sometimes, a player is released regardless of how well he actually played.

This book is designed to accompany you as you spend the 2016 season following the Toronto Blue Jays and their minor league affiliates. With the 2016 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

As in our previous editions, tapping or clicking on a player’s name in the 2016 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.

You may not be familiar with all of the statistics that I use and 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. To figure it out for yourself, divide strikeouts or walks by batters faced (for pitchers) or plate appearances (for hitters).

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 takeaway 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, following the logic that, once the ball leaves a pitcher’s hand, he has little control over what happens. 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 Bautista’s batting average in a given year has tended to stay right around his  his BABIP, usually within about 15 points since 2011. 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. A pitcher who gets a lot of ground balls will generally give up a lot of hits (like Casey Lawrence).

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 (going back to 2008). 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 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.

Another site that takes the MiLB information and puts it into handy graphic form 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.

When I give you velocity, pitch selection and general scouting information, I’m getting it either from my own legwork, watching radar guns of players or scouts in the ballpark (usually not the ballpark gun that is displayed on the scoreboard). I’ll also report scouting reports that I’ve seen online. Baseball America is a great source for players who are in the club’s Top 30 prospects from their Prospect Handbook that publishes every year. Lesser known players can sometimes have scouting reports online from their college days but usually for them, I’m getting that information myself.

How to Follow the Games

The internet has made following minor league baseball games much easier. By subscribing to MiLB.tv, you can get all Triple-A and most Double-A games on your computer (or other device) as live (or archived), streaming video. Some 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).

One of the things that I love the most about watching minor league baseball is that the sport has the largest gap between the skill level required at even the highest amateur levels and that needed in the major leagues of any of the major sports. You don’t see a Lebron James or Sidney Crosby stepping into the big leagues and making an impact immediately after being drafted. Even the best high school players can expect between three and five years of seasoning and a college player can expect between one and three years. The Ken Griffey Juniors, Alex Rodriguezes and Jose Fernandezes are very rare in this sport.

When we watch minor league games at the lowest levels, we’re seeing very raw players who will need a lot more work to reach the majors. They make a lot of mistakes in the field, take a lot of bad swings and have trouble finding the strike zone. The higher up you go, the closer the actual skill levels resemble that of the big league players but then the difference becomes more mental than physical. Consistency and ability to execute a game plan on the diamond are what separates players in Double-A and Triple-A from the major leagues more than actual skill level and if you listen to minor leaguers talk (like on the Blue Jays from Away Podcast), you'll frequently hear them speak about wanting to be more consistent. 

Minor league players 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. Boomer Collins had two three-for-four games in his final three games of the year. In each of the three-for-four games, he came within a triple of the cycle and yet, he was released after the season. That decision (while a little perplexing) would be mindblowing if all that you knew about Boomer Collins was from those last three games. You also wouldn't have seen the struggles he had early on in his stint in Dunedin. Players in the minor leagues need to be watched over a period of time to track both their skills and their progress, particularly in how they respond to adversity.

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 oh-for-four 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 Foreword last year, 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 to us. 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, game to game and season to season, you can get the most out of your minor league baseball experience.

About this Book

The 2016 Toronto Blue Jays Minor League Handbook is divided up into four main sections. The first is the one that you’re reading right now. In it, we have this introduction as well our annual essays that will hopefully whet your appetite for minor league baseball. This year, I’ve contributed a pair of essays. The first talks about Ian Parmley's ability to stick around with the Blue Jays when so many of the players drafted shortly before and after him could not. The second is a much longer feature essay than I've written in the past entitled Dearly Departed. Stretching many thousands of words, you can read about what it's like for players who have left the Blue Jays' system. I talked to four players who left the system (although one has re-signed with the club) about their transitions. You'll read about Chase De Jong, traded to the Dodgers, Boomer Collins, released by the Blue Jays and pursuing a new career in cricket, John Anderson, who tested the minor league free agency waters before agreeing to sign back with the Blue Jays and Ben White who decided to retire at the end of spring training last year.

This essay is followed by a summary of the 2015 draft. You’ll get an overview followed by a blow by blow account of who the Blue Jays selected where in the 2015 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 2016 coaching staff, the 2016 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 included 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 David Aardsma to Danny Young.

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 2016 Toronto Blue Jays Minor League Handbook. If you see me at a ballgame in 2016 (keep an eye on @JaysfromAway on Twitter) give me a tweet and say hello!

Essay: The Curious Case of Ian Parmley

By Jay Blue

I bet you haven't heard much about Ian Parmley. He's been an unassuming member of the Blue Jays minor league system since being selected in the seventh round of the 2012 draft. The fact that he's still in the Blue Jays' system, almost four years later is an indicator of how much of a survivor he is.

2012 was an interesting draft in the first 10 rounds for the Toronto Blue Jays. It was a year of vintage Alex Anthopoulos whose entire focus was to game the system. Anthopoulos had acquired numerous extra draft picks in the first three rounds, thanks to compensation picks for Tyler Beede and several departing free agents. MLB was using a system where the club was given a pool of money to spend on the first 10 rounds (dictated by slot values assigned to each pick) and Anthopoulos went for broke with his first seven picks (in the first three rounds) and then, essentially, punted rounds four through 10 by selecting college seniors who would take very low signing bonuses, freeing up money for players selected earlier. Highlights of the players taken early in the draft include D.J. Davis and Marcus Stroman (both in the first round), Matt Smoral, Mitch Nay and Tyler Gonzales (supplemental round), Chase De Jong (second round) and Anthony Alford (third round).

After the third round, only Ian Parmley remains in the Blue Jays' system. Tucker Donahue (fourth round), Brad Delatte (fifth), Eric Phillips (sixth), Tucker Frawley (eighth) and Jordan Leyland (ninth) are all out of the system. Outfielder Alex Azor (tenth round) is technically still in the system but he was an US Naval Academy grad and is still serving five years in the navy. Not only are none of these players still with the Blue Jays, none of them are still playing baseball professionally.

If you want to compare with a different season, in 2011, the Blue Jays selected eight times in the first three rounds with Tyler Beede (unsigned), Jacob Anderson, Joe Musgrove (traded), Dwight Smith, Kevin Comer (traded), Daniel Norris (traded, made the majors), Jeremy Gabryszwski and John Stilson all came to the club. In rounds four through 10, the Jays picked up Tom Robson (still around), Andrew Chin (unsigned), Anthony DeSclafani (traded, made the majors), Christian Lopes, Mark Biggs, Andrew Suarez (unsigned) and Aaron Garza (unsigned). So, in 2011, the Blue Jays took three players who are still in their system from rounds four through 10 while also taking Anthony DeSclafani who had a poor major league debut in 2014 with the Marlins and had a good season last year as a starter in Cincinnati.

If we look a year ahead, the Jays took Phil Bickford in the first round , Clinton Hollon in the second and Patrick Murphy in the third. In the fourth through 10th, ALL of the players selected are still playing with Evan Smith (fourth), Daniel Lietz (fifth), Conner Greene (seventh) and Chad Girodo (ninth) still in the system while Matt Boyd (sixth) and Kendall Graveman (eighth) have both made the majors and have been traded. Garret Custons, a catcher out of the Air Force Academy is serving in the U.S. Air Force.

Then there's Ian Parmley. Coming from a draft year where every single one of his round four through 10 compatriots have ended their baseball careers within two years of being drafted, Parmley still hangs on. We wish him the best and he's shown that he can do well in small spurts. We'll likely see him in New Hampshire this season as he continues to climb up the ladder.

Essay: Dearly Departed

by Jay Blue

The 2015 season saw the Blue Jays part ways with a number of their young players in the minor league system.  It was a major shock to those of us who take a serious interest in the Blue Jays’ minor leagues. Sure, when you've been writing about the minor leagues for a few years, you come to learn how tenuous a player's hold on a roster spot in affiliated baseball can be, but when a team begins a fire sale of their top prospects while you're traveling in Europe and Asia and temporarily out of touch, the resulting cavalcade of names sent away (and top quality talent brought into the major league squad) is quite overwhelming.

The sell-off began quietly. On July 2, the Blue Jays sent pitcher Chase De Jong and second baseman Tim Locastro to the Los Angeles Dodgers in exchange for an international bonus pool slot that would allow them to minimize the penalty for signing international free agent Vladimir Guerrero to a $3.9 million bonus. Then, on July 28, the floodgates opened. The Blue Jays sent Jose Reyes and three right-handed pitchers, Miguel Castro, Jeff Hoffman and Jesus Tinoco, to the Colorado Rockies for Troy Tulowitzki and LaTroy Hawkins. On July 30, the Blue Jays emptied out their left-handed pitching talent by sending Daniel Norris, Matt Boyd and Jairo Labourt to the Tigers for David Price. Reliever Mark Lowe came to the Jays on deadline day from the Seattle Mariners for three more lefties: Rob Rasmussen, Jake Brentz and Nick Wells while a pair of righties, Jimmy Cordero and Alberto Tirado, brought Ben Revere and cash to Toronto from the Philadelphia Phillies. The Blue Jays also managed to make a waiver deal by sending shortstop Dawel Lugo to the Arizona Diamondbacks for Cliff Pennington and cash on August 8.

All in all, the Blue Jays parted ways with two infielders, six right-handed pitchers, and another six left-handed pitchers, several of whom were among the Jays' top prospects. Trading 14 players, almost all of whom were ranked in the club's top 30, really thins out a system. The minor league system, which had taken on several other minor leaguers to fill in some holes, was very different when I returned to Toronto in August than it was when I left in June.

Players leave the system. It's a fact of life. Getting traded isn't the only way to go. Players get released, and it can happen before, during or even at the end of the regular season. There are always surprises but, watching a player's career unfold, sometimes the writing is on the wall. In November, the Blue Jays released 15 players including Jose Acosta, Guillermo De La Cruz and Jean Almanzar from the DSL, Joe Claver, John Kravetz and Dean Bell from the Bluefield Blue Jays, Kevin Garcia, Michael Kraft, Bob Wheatley and Sean Hurley from the Vancouver Canadians, and Arik Sikula, Griffin Murphy, Boomer Collins and Christian Vazquez from the Dunedin Blue Jays. This is on top of a number of players who were released at the end of spring training as well as during the season.

Another way for a player's time to end with a club is if a player becomes a free agent. In this case, I'm referring to a player getting to the end of his seven-year initial contract. Minor leaguers are, fundamentally, indentured servants for the first seven years of their career with the team holding six annual contract options. Players earn very little money during the baseball season (and nothing in spring training and the instructional league) and are at the mercy of their parent club but they finally gain a little bit of control over their own destinies when they reach the end of seven years (they also become free agents if they're released). The Blue Jays had 29 players opt for free agency: Dustin Antolin, Austin Bibens-Dirkx, Derek Blacksher, Greg Burke, Cory Burns, Lendy Castillo, Scott Copeland, Greg Infante, Mike Lee, Murphy Smith, Andrew Albers, John Anderson, Scott Barnes, Colt Hynes, Luis Perez, Luis Hurtado, George Kottaras, Sean Ochinko, Ty Kelly, Ryan Schimpf, Jonathan Diaz, Kevin Nolan, Chris Dickerson, Danny Dorn, Cole Garner, Caleb Gindl, Brad Glenn, Alex Hassan and Melky Mesa. As of this writing, only Anderson, Copeland, Mesa, Hurtado, Hynes, Antolin and Murphy Smith have re-signed with the Blue Jays while Ryan Schimpf has re-signed with the Padres, George Kottaras signed with the Giants, Kelly signed with the Mets, Infante and Burke with the Phillies, Hassan with the Dodgers, Diaz with the Yankees, Castillo with the Tigers, and Barnes with the Cubs.

Finally, players sometimes just decide that it's time to hang it up and retire. A few Blue Jays made the somewhat surprising choice this year with righty Ben White retiring at the end of spring training, Chris Carlson retired after the season ended and pitcher Chase Mallard filed his retirement papers over the winter.

But what about the players themselves? Getting traded can't be the easiest thing to deal with, particularly for the first time. Sure, Rob Rasmussen was traded five times in his career (and he also recently decided to retire), but for the young players involved in the trade deadline fire sale, that was the exception rather than the rule.

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Chase De Jong was among the first players traded away and, as is usual for a young player traded for the first time in his career, it was a big surprise. With a late call to the ballpark the next day, De Jong went night fishing with Dunedin Blue Jays teammates Matt Smoral and Max Pentecost. After a late night on the lake, De Jong woke around 10:30 the next day to a flurry of phone messages and texts. I think I had two or three missed calls from Charlie Wilson, and three calls from his secretary, Kim Marsh. I think I had eight or nine text messages from my trainer in Dunedin, Shawn McDermott, and just a bunch of different people were trying to contact me, and my first instinct was, man, this is weird!

De Jong called Charlie Wilson back first and it was from Wilson that he got the news of being traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Wilson made it clear that this isn't because we don't like you, it's because somebody else likes you even more and they went out and they traded for you, he told De Jong. Chase’s only reaction, What?, on the other hand, wasn’t quite as composed as he might have liked.

De Jong’s next move was to contact the Dunedin Blue Jays’ trainer, Shawn McDermott. De Jong was oblivious to the time pressures that being traded had imposed on him. When Chase offered to come into the ballpark at around 2:30, a good hour and a half before team stretches were scheduled to start, McDermott told him, No, man. You’ve got to get here. You just got traded. For De Jong, there was a flurry of activity that included heading to see the team doctor, going to the minor league spring training complex for an exit physical, signing paperwork, saying his goodbyes, heading to Florida Auto Exchange Stadium to clean out his locker, all while dealing with incoming phone calls and texts. De Jong recalls being contacted by Gabe Kapler, the Dodgers’ player development director and Rick Knapp, their pitching coordinator. In addition, he was contacted by the Dodgers’ travel coordinator who wanted to have De Jong on a plane at six o’clock pm that same day. De Jong had to ask for a little more time to get things organized on his end and inform his family, which resided in southern California. His mother had just flown back to California and had started getting alerts on her own phone when she changed planes in Memphis. She said that once she touched down in Memphis, she just started crying and it was just a crazy, crazy thing where I put her on a plane to go back home and I was one day behind her. Chase also put the trade into the perspective for his dad. He was just floored because, you know, a kid that grew up in Long Beach, California is now going to be playing for the Dodgers' organization and it was just so, so cool.

The trade also put some curious decisions by the Blue Jays’ front office in perspective. De Jong had yet to make a start in Dunedin after being promoted from Lansing due to back spasms that had delayed his scheduled start. They pushed me back one day and [I was] going to the ballpark thinking that I'll be pitching the next game, they inform me that Alex [Anthopoulos] called down and had personally put me on the disabled list and then ordered an MRI and for me to go get acupuncture. And I'm thinking at this time, ‘Man that's kind of weird’ because, yes, I was quote-unquote a prospect but I wasn't a Daniel Norris or Jeff Hoffman type prospect up there so I thought it was very strange, that the GM would call down and put those kind of orders in. So looking back on it with hindsight being 20/20, looking back on it, I was thinking, ‘Ok, that was a little bit outside of standard operating procedure.’ I should have known back then that something was up, being around the trade deadline that hey, you know, this could be.... maybe my name is in consideration for a couple of things.

The transition was fairly smooth from organization to organization. De Jong reported that his pitching coordinator in the Dodgers' system had called Sal Fasano [the Blue Jays' minor league pitching coordinator] and talked to him about what I was doing, what I was working on. He called me and talked about that. That also made the transition very easy.

De Jong didn't just have to work with a new staff in Dodgers Blue (as opposed to Blue Jays Blue); he spoke about what it was like joining a new group of teammates with the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes. One of the Lansing Lugnuts' rival teams in the Midwest League is the Great Lakes Loons, who play in Midland, Michigan, just about an hour and a half away from Lansing. The Loons also happen to be the Class-A affiliate of the Los Angeles Dodgers and De Jong had played against many of his new teammates. De Jong said,I had one teammate that became a very good friend of mine through the second half of the season. I think he gave me the first series to get my feet wet, and then he reassured me that, in his broken English, that last year he hit a home run off of me and I told him, well, that's not really special because a lot of people hit home runs off of me last year. We had a good laugh and then he comes up to me and says ‘It's okay though, because you struck me out the next at bat.’

The Lugnuts and the Loons also went on to play each other in the first round of the Midwest League playoffs but with a new organization comes new allegiances, at least that's what De Jong's new teammates thought. I know I got a lot of negative feedback when I tweeted that I was proud of the Lansing Lugnuts for taking out the Great Lakes Loons for the playoff spot, De Jong said. But despite the ribbing from his Quakes teammates, he remained unapologetic and went on to compete for a championship of his own. He had a fantastic finish to his season, starting Game 1 of the California League playoffs and posting a 1.42 ERA, allowing just two runs in 12 2/3 innings with 14 strikeouts and four walks on the road to winning a California League championship with Rancho Cucamonga.

When it was all over, De Jong commented that he had a great year. He and Locastro knew that if both the Lugnuts and the Quakes won their league championship, they would be in the unique position to have been a part of two different championship teams in the same year. It was a joy to go out there every single day, every fifth day for me, and compete with my team and I know that going into the playoffs, Timmy Locastro and I were both, it was nice because we were on the west coast and we could check the Lansing score before we got on the field and we would always keep an eye on those guys because Timmy and I were eligible to win two rings which was pretty cool.

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Not all players get a chance to keep playing professionally after their first team cuts ties with them. Boomer Collins was about as far from Chase De Jong in the minor league pecking order as one could be. While they were teammates in Lansing in 2015, De Jong was a second round pick who received an $860,000 bonus to sign with the Blue Jays after high school. Collins, on the other hand, played four years of college ball, first at Nebraska and then at Dallas Baptist University and was forced to sit out a year after transfering, making him already 24 when he signed his pro contract with the Blue Jays (by comparison, De Jong just turned 22 this winter). As a non-drafted free agent, Collins would have received a very small signing bonus, meaning that the club had invested less in his development and future than someone like De Jong.

Collins even said it himself, You have a shorter leash as a free agent than someone who got paid a million dollars. That's in every single business around the world, if you're paying someone a million dollars, he's going to get a little bit more opportunity to do things than the guy you're not paying anything. Still, getting released at the end of the 2015 season was a surprise. I had a really good campaign, the whole year, I played pretty well. I got a promotion to High-A and, I struggled a little bit at first in High-A and the last month or so, I really picked it up and raised my average 40 or 50 points. So I really wasn't expecting to get released this offseason but as a free agent, you never know when your time is no matter how good or bad you do.

Despite not having his contract renewed by the Blue Jays, Collins only had praise for the team that signed him, saying I have nothing bad to say about the Blue Jays. They treated me with utmost respect and they gave me the opportunities to play and I'm super thankful for that. Almost everyone in the organization who I've spoken to about Collins remarks on his positive attitude and he tended to take everything in stride, even pitching in an emergency situation one night. Collins said, Baseball's a hard enough game as it is, if you show up to the field worrying about what happened yesterday or worrying about other things, you're going to drive yourself crazy. I was fortunate enough to be given an opportunity to play baseball and I was going to go out and make the best of it and try to do it for as long as I possibly could.

Boomer is taking that positive attitude to a new sport that he hopes will provide a viable career path for him and his wife. Boomer is currently working on transferring the skills that he's honed over the course of his lifetime in baseball to cricket. Collins was contacted by Julien Fountain, a British cricket coach (and former baseball player) who founded a program called SwitchHit20 designed to offer minor league baseball players a chance to continue a career in professional sports by playing T20 cricket (a shorter, more exciting game than the longer test matches). At the time, Collins was still with the Blue Jays but, according to Tyler Maun at MiLB.com, his brain was ticking over from a cricket perspective for almost a year, texting or calling Fountain frequently with questions about the game. At the end of the 2015 season, however, when the Blue Jays didn't renew his contract, Collins decided to get the ball rolling on a new adventure.

In many ways, the training was the same. Collins said, I set up the pitching machine and instead of hitting full balls, I just set it up to bounce, line up in front of it and line up on the side just to play different shots and train that way and then fielding is just the same thing, I'm just doing it without a glove. So now when I'm playing catch with guys, I just do it without a glove on. while at first it hurt a little bit, now I'm starting to learn how to catch it the right way where it doesn't hurt as bad. Collins is taking his training seriously, working on his hitting, his fielding as well as his physical conditioning for hours a day. He said, basically, I'm just keeping the same schedule, I'm just doing cricket instead of baseball.

The next step for Boomer is to continue to immerse himself in cricket culture. To do that, he traveled to Bangalore, India to train. Collins felt like a man out of time, essentially losing two days in travel to get to India from Texas while being in a time zone 12 hours ahead of his wife. He spent all day every day of his two-and-a-half weeks in India training with members of the Indian Premier League's Royal Challengers Bangalore to get engulfed in the cricket culture and cricket world. Collins said, I learned so much about the game from a strategic point and just a playing point just by working out with them every single day.

The ultimate goal is to get picked up by a team somewhere in the world. Collins was entered into the Pakistan Superleague draft and into the Caribbean Premier League draft and wasn't selected in either league despite generating some press. But he's not giving up. Collins sees himself trying to drum up more enthusiasm for cricket in the US mainstream. He said, If you have a bunch of baseball players who are playing cricket I think it'll get a lot more publicity . . . because Americans, when they look at cricket, they see it's just foreign people playing a foreign funny game. Collins wants to see American-born players (who aren't the kids of immigrants) with the athletic skill sets of baseball, football and basketball players taking to cricket and seeing the game as a viable athletic option.

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While Boomer Collins is looking to remain a professional athlete by making a change to cricket, former Blue Jays’ minor-league pitcher Ben White is looking to make an impact with players in a different venue, the financial world. White spent four years in the Blue Jays’ organization and, like Collins, was a non-drafted free agent. Signing as a graduate of Temple University, the Philadelphia native pitched for two years (with mediocre results) with the Vancouver Canadians in 2011 and 2012 before moving on to Lansing Lugnuts where pitching coach Vince Horsman helped him take a big step forward in 2013. 

Even then, after his two years of short-season ball, White was thinking beyond his time in the game. He said, once I finished short season ball after the second year, I decided that if I wasn’t moving forward, I was going to hang them up because I had a college degree that had been paid for and that’s an investment that you should use at some point.

White continued moving forward  and spent 2014 pitching in Advanced-A Dunedin with a two-start taste of Double-A New Hampshire. Striking out 14 batters in 11 innings, White felt he could compete at the level. I knew I could pitch there, I had a couple of good games. My goal , obviously, the next year going into spring training was going to be Double-A. That’s where I finished, that’s where I wanted to start. All of the coaches generally say that if you can pitch in Double-A, you can pitch in the big leagues. A lot of those guys, either they’re on their way up to the big leagues or on their way down from the big leagues. I definitely thought at that point that there was a shot that I could throw there, it was just a question of whether I would get there.

With that knowledge, and with his desire to keep moving forward, White set his sights on Double-A New Hampshire coming out of spring training