Nate Pearson needs innings, but gosh darn does he look like a pitching prospect. He pitched five innings of shutout baseball, striking out nine, walking none and, so as not discourage the competition, allowed one person to reach safely via bat. Please see Sportsnet for Vladdy Jr. highlights.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. gets a home run. Kevin Smith, you get a home run. Anthony Alford, you get a home run. Despite those home runs, Buffalo and New Hampshire lost. Dunedin won with home runs from Ryan Noda and Cullen Large.

The season is a week old today and I thought we should take a peak at the hitting stats, even though it is a small sample size and for some hitters the weather has not been hitter friendly. Even so, it is fun to see what trends we are seeing early, even if they disappear in another few weeks.

The Fisher Cats were down to their final strike, trailing by two runs but came back from the dead to walk it off. That made up for the losses of Dunedin and Lansing. Buffalo were "colded out". Ryan Hissey was the big star in New Hampshire with Josh Palacios close behind. Patrick Murphy started and pitched well.

It was a no-win Tuesday that included a walk-off defeat. New Hampshire was rained out. #LetsGoBlueJays

Here are your highlights from opening day in the minor leagues. The affiliates split, 2-2. In three of the parks the weather was cold so pitchers can get a mulligan. Some of the lower level hitters might ask for a mulligan too, they might never have experienced cold like that.

The minor leagues get going today on four fronts. Buffalo, New Hampshire and Dunedin start at home, while Lansing start on the road. Dunedin's home game is asterisk worthy as Dunedin stadium is being renovated so the Jays will play their home games at the Phillies old home in Clearwater. Because of conflicts at the "new" stadium, with other college and HS teams, the D-Jays will play a handful of their home games on the road this year. Buffalo play this afternoon, all others tonight.

The Blue Jays are assigning minor league players to their teams this weekend. The teams will travel to their home cities on Monday or Tuesday with the local teams announcing the rosters soon thereafter. Today I will look at where the top 30 prospects will be assigned and take my best guess. These guesses are not exhaustive, I am mainly looking to place the names you know who are prospects.

Seems I've found as many top 30 lists as I'm going to at this point without subscribing to a dozen services. Time to summarize them before the season gets going.

The Bauxites have spoken. I received eight top 30 prospect lists and I have compiled them into a combined top 30. The resulting top 30 is similar in many ways to the Top 30 posted last week but there are a few key differences. The top nine on both lists have the same names with small changes in the order. Further down, the differences are bigger.

For the purposes of explaining the two top 30 lists, I will refer to last weeks list as the “official” list and this one as the “Bauxite” list.

Now that you have reviewed the top 30, it’s time to consider those who did not make it.

The top ten features five returnees from 2016, three newly drafted players and two prospects who had big years to move up the list into the top 10.

The middle 10 of our top 30 prospects is a real melting pot. You have players from last year's top 10 who are dropping on account of underwhelming performance. You have the players with average years who remained in the middle. You have a rising star who had a great season to put himself on the map, as well as a new draftee and a player who arrived through a trade.

It's time for the newest edition of the Batter's Box Blue Jays Top 30 prospects. This marks the fifteenth year of the top 30 here on Da Box.

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. The Jays front office added a lot of pieces to the system this year as part of the mid-season clear-out. 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 prospects. Some people see them as prospects, some as longshots and some as not a prospect. As a result there are many players who 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.

Two of last year's top 30 were traded, Conner Greene and Edward Olivares were dispatched in the off-season. Three players "graduated", Richard Urena , Ryan Borucki and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. The remaining 25 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 2018. 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. Eighteen of last year's top 30 are back. As mentioned, five no longer qualify so seven have dropped off. Not all of the seven who dropped had bad years, some were injured and some just had average years and dropped off due to more competition in a stronger system.

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