The Thundering Herd from Buffalo/Trenton were the only winners on the night. New Hampshire's game in Portland was rained out. #WeAreBlueJays

Number two on Baseball America's Top 10 Most Talented Minor League Teams was number one on the scoreboard Tuesday. The affiliates won two and lost two on Opening Night. #WeAreBlueJays

After somewhere around 600 days, minor league baseball is back. All four teams play today. For those of you who haven't been following the minor leagues, the New Hampshire Fisher Cats are the only one of the Jays four teams who will play their home games at their own park. The major league Jays are using the Dunedin park and intend to use the Buffalo park so both of those teams have been bumped, for now. Vancouver have to play in Oregon because the border is closed, again for now.

The Jays minor leaguers were assigned to their teams yesterday with the season starting next week. They will move out to their cities tomorrow. Shi Davidi has the scoop on some assignments.

We're all wondering about prospects as the Jays have made trades, promoted guys, have a lot in the top 100 right now.  So lets look at some history.  Baseball America has been doing Jay top 10 lists for prospects since 1983, top 100's for MLB since 1990 roughly.  So I thought lets do a summary of them.  I thought about others - MLB.com's (2012 and up), Baseball Prospectus (2007 and up) but BA's was easiest to find and actually has guys whose careers have ended for sure so more useful for this purpose.

The Minors are now set for a decade. No worries about the Jays ending up in Vegas again.

The Top Prospect Lists are coming at last from assorted sites.

As expected the Jays have decided to go with AAA Buffalo, AA New Hampshire, A+ Vancouver, A Dunedin (lowest level of the minors now). Goodbye to Lansing (who should find another affiliation - probably Oakland it appears), Bluefield, and GCL Jays. The DSL team might survive though.

For 2021 the minors will be changed drastically from 2019, and not just due to COVID.

Time for the summary of the top 30's from as many sites as possible. 

Baseball America has released its 2020 edition of the Top 30 prospects in the Toronto Blue Jays system.


2019 fifth-round pick Tanner Morris made it onto Baseball America's Top 30 Jays prospects list.

The top 30 is complete for another year. Here are some notes on those who are on, and who missed, the list.

The top 10 features three returnees from last year's top 10, five returnees from the top 30, seven who were in the system in 2018 and three players who are new to the system.

The middle 10 of our top 30 prospects has plenty of pitching, several of whom are very close to the major leagues. We also have a couple of catchers and two very different hitters.

It's time for the newest edition of the Batter's Box Blue Jays Top 30 prospects. This marks the sixteenth year of the top 30 here on Da Box. We are later than usual this year but its a quiet time for baseball news so this gives us something baseball related to discuss.

As we remind readers each year, the expectation of the top 30 prospects for any team is that one third will improve, one third will regress and one third will stay as they were. This year nine players from the 2018 list graduated to the big leagues. That is a big number and when you graduate that many players, it does impact the value of your minor league system. In case you forgot, the graduates are Vladdy, Biggio, Bo, Danny Jansen, Rowdy Tellez, Sean Reid-Foley, Thomas Pannone, Billy McKinney and Travis Bergen. Reese McGuire is still eligible for the 2019 top 30. Max Pentecost was also on the 2018 list and he retired so that makes ten players who are ineligible for the 2019 list before we get to on the field performance.

The Jays front office added more pieces to the system this year as part of the now annual mid-season clear-out. Simeon Woods Richardson and Anthony Kay are the two most notable additions. But not all of the prospects added via trades have made this list. As has been discussed on Da Box, the Jays system includes a lot of players who are possible, or fringe, prospects. Some people see them as prospects, some as long-shots and some as not a prospect. As a result there are many players who some Blue Jay fans consider to be prospects who did not make it onto our top 30. In another season, or if they were on a different team, they would be on a top 30 list.

After the ten players have to come off our list, the remaining 20 players from last year's top 30 go into Da Box's mixer with the newly drafted players, the international signings, the traded-for players and those whose performance took a step forward in 2019. The mixer goes to work, powered by the votes of our minor league team, and kicks out the definitive list of the Blue Jays top 30 prospects. Only fourteen of last year's top 30 are back. That means six have dropped off and we have 16 new entrants.

As usual the first 10 are published today, the next 10 tomorrow, and the top 10 on the day after. Let the discussion begin!