And so it begins...

The Jays open the 2023 season with a ten game road trip, and the defending NL Central champs provide the initial opposition.

The regular season is ready to go. Now it is time to go on the record with your predictions for the season.

Daily minor league updates have been a feature on Batters Box since 2004. A lot has changed in the baseball world over the last twenty years and now the daily MLU is changing too.

The minor league season starts next week, in Buffalo. The other teams wait a week. We will all be looking at who hits the ground running in 2023. Who pitches or hits well in April. But there are some other things that I will be looking at.

The Blue Jays have enjoyed a pleasantly uneventful time in Florida so far.

I think it's even on the television. Yusei Kikuchi will throw the first pitch of the spring.

Keith Law published his top 100 prospects and his top 20 prospects by organization over the last two weeks in The Athletic.

I didn't want to ask questions about the rankings, it doesn't matter that player X is four or five spots above where Batters Box ranked him. So I asked questions that were more general. If you haven't read Keith's rankings they are substantially similar to those on Batters Box. Keith is not as high on Addison Barger, he has concerns about his ability to hit left handed pitching. He has similar concerns with Spencer Horwitz. Keith includes Manuel Beltre and Alex De Jesus in his top 20, so I asked about them, in general terms.

Football is over and baseball is back. Although it is not the required reporting date yet, many players are already in Dunedin along with several of the Blue Jays writers.

I was wasting my time scrolling through the Twitter when my beady eye lighted upon this particular image and I thought I would share.

With all the 10+ year deals going on and the Jays having 3 franchise players in Vlad, Bo, and Alek the question becomes should the Jays do it? How have guys like those 3 done in the past?

There has been some talk of comparisons of farm systems, drafting, etc. recently and the Jays weren't listed as being one of the better organizations. But does this hold up when one digs into data?

The Blue Jays have a lot of players who could have made the back end of the top 30 list. It was hard to pick who should be in the 27 to 30 range and who just missed. I mentioned at the start that eleven players were dropped from the top 30. They are Adam Kloffenstein, Manuel Beltre, Miguel Hiraldo, Rikelbin De Castro, Victor Mesia, Chad Dallas, Joey Murray, Eric Pardinho, Chavez Young, Luis Quinones and Trent Palmer. Some of the pitchers dropped off due to injuries, they have a chance to rebound. There are a number of international signees on this list who didn't progress in 2022 but many of them are still young and will be hoping for a rebound in 2023.

On to the top 10.

The middle 10 of our top 30 prospects have a lot of players who have been in the system for a few years and whose prospect status is now on the bubble. Six of them have reached AA and four have reached Vancouver so their time to put up or show up is now.