Why Blue Jays will be patient with top prospect Orelvis Martinez

TORONTO — It’s not even May and already you get the sense that the some of the chattering classes are keeping one eye on the Toronto Blue Jays and another on what Orelvis Martinez is doing at triple-A Buffalo.

Please stop, will you? He’s not Jackson Holliday — but more importantly, the Blue Jays aren’t the Baltimore Orioles.

The usual caveats apply when discussing minor-league players considered to be prospects. First? Although organizations have access to analytical data that allows them to be more comfortably predictive, a prospects “ranking” ultimately depends on what another team would offer in a trade. And once you get past the elite prospect tier, beauty is very much in the eye of the beholder.

Second? You must know the player as a person. Not every 20-something is the same as the other; not every 20-something is going to take the same degree of solace from knowing that the likes of Mike Trout and Alex Bregman were demoted earlier in their careers.

Third? We just aren’t privy to the evidence that organizations have or use when it comes to judging players.

I found the comments of Orioles general manager Mike Elias to be hugely instructive. Holliday was called up by the Orioles on April 10, after starting the year at triple-A Norfolk after his bid to make the Major League roster was one of the dominant storylines of spring training. The 20-year-old Holliday had two singles and two walks in 36 plate appearances, whiffing on over 49 per cent of his swings. At the time of his promotion, he had an OPS of 1.077 with two homers and five doubles in 10 games. 

“We moved (Holliday) fast through the minors and we were kind of trying to get him a spot where he was challenged,” Elias told reporters on Friday. “He gets all the way through triple-A, comes into spring training — and looks pretty good there. It was hard for me to know exactly where he was, based on the evidence I was working with.

“It comes at a cost to get negative feedback,” Elias said. “But it’s valuable.”

Martinez’s counting stats and underlying numbers suggest serious offensive progress has been made by the 22-year-old infielder. But by the same token, his five errors suggest that Blue Jays manager John Schneider is right saying the organization wants to see his game become a little “tighter.”

Let’s be clear: inside and outside the organization, Martinez is the Blue Jays top position-player prospect, just as Holliday is the consensus Orioles top prospect. But the Orioles are the defending American League East champions who are playing (and hitting) at a high level with stars such as Gunnar Henderson more than living up to their status. The Blue Jays haven’t hit worth a damn all season. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. rolls a single or gets off a good swing, and it’s a cause for rejoicing. Bo Bichette just ended a career-long 18 at-bat hitless streak. The Blue Jays are full value for their below-.500 record and are still enveloped by the funk of that playoff stinker. It is a time for uncomfortable conversations about the future.

That’s not the environment I’d want to see Martinez come in to. Not now. Second base — where Martinez would theoretically play — isn’t a concern defensively, and run prevention is one thing this lineup does well. Calling up Addison Barger was easy: Kevin Kiermaier went on the injured list; Daulton Varsho is a more than capable replacement in centre field and Barger was having a nice year at the plate at triple-A. The fact the Blue Jays had no issue sticking him in left field for his debut suggests they’re comfortable with his frame of mind. Plus — and I mean this with all due respect — the expectations for Barger are considerably lower than Martinez.

Honestly? The only time I want to see Orelvis Martinez in the majors in 2024 is after the triple-A season is over. If he’s here before then? That’s probably a bad sign; it either means they’re punting on 2024 or at least jogging up to the line of scrimmage to get into punt formation. It’s not Martinez’s fault that the $228-million roster is poorly constructed and bereft of power, and that its key offensive players haven’t hit. It’s not up to him to be a saviour, to help provide “a boost of energy” or “a different feel.”

There’s another thing to bear in mind when discussing the Orioles: unlike the Blue Jays, the organization is so chock-a-block with gilt-edged prospects both at the major- and minor-league level that getting a read on who can be promoted and when they should be promoted is at least to some degree a matter of economics. Multi-year contracts will be a talking point sometime soon for the Orioles brand, new ownership, and that’s a when individual expectations and agendas start to intrude on organizational goals. Given the approaching free agency of Bichette and Guerrero Jr., and the thinness and pitching injuries in the Blue Jays minor-league system, that is something the Blue Jays need worry about no longer …

The Lone Ranger meets Doc Halladay

The dominance of the Philadelphia Phillies rotation through the first month of the season has brought back memories of the 2011 Phillies staff that consisted of Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Cole Hamels, Roy Oswalt and Joe Blanton. The Phillies won 102 games that year, only to lose their National League Division Series to the St. Louis Cardinals when Chris Carpenter fired a three-hitter in a 1-0 Game 5 Cardinals win over his friend and former teammate Halladay. The current Phillies rotation is headlined by Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola, but it’s Ranger Suarez who is 4-0 (0.30) in his last four starts and who had a 32-inning scoreless streak snapped Saturday in a 5-1 win over the Phillies. Suarez is commissioner Rob Manfred’s kind of guy: the time of game in all four of those wins has been 2:15 or under — including a 2:07 quickie on April 16 — making Suarez the first MLB pitcher to win four consecutive starts in under 2:15 since Halladay tossed four consecutive wins for the Blue Jays in his 22-win, Cy Young 2003 season.

Know yourself

One of the keys to a sustained run of excellence is making the correct calls on your own prospects. A case in point? The St. Louis Cardinals, who traded away two-thirds of last year’s American League All-Star outfield (Randy Arozarena) within a month of each other following the 2019 season and then moved Tyler O’Neill to the Boston Red Sox this winter. The Cardinals have spent five years mismanaging a treasure trove of outfielders, with O’Neill, a Maple Ridge, B.C., product, seemingly on the way out after an early season run-in in 2023 with an over-his-skis manager Ollie Marmol. O’Neill’s 63 miles per hour bloop single walked off the Chicago Cubs Sunday night and he has clubbed nine home runs in his first 29 games for the Red Sox, tied with George (Boomer) Scott for the most by a Red Sox player in their first 20 games with the team.

Rays down
If you’re feeling down after Shohei Ohtani’s weekend visit to the Rogers Centre, peek at the AL East standings: after being swept by the Chicago White Sox this weekend (!), the Tampa Bay Rays are three games under-.500 for the first time since April 15, 2021, when they were 5-8. That Rays pitching magic has evaporated, folks.

Dumbing down the discourse

Given the success of the Houston Astros, it’s understandable that a certain portion of the Blue Jays fanbase can’t wait for vice-president of baseball strategy James Click to be next G.M. — although other than acquiring catcher Yainer Diaz, most of Click's moves with the Astros were measured and hardly transformative because the Astros foundation had been laid. Less understandable? The feeling that Click would somehow free the organization from any real or imagined tyranny of analytics.

Jeff Blair hosts Blair & Barker on Sportsnet 590/The Fan and Sportsnet. He also hosts weekdays Blue Jays Talk.