Have the Blue Jays Succeeded in the Draft Under Ross Atkins?

[Bob Ritchie]

MLB held the 2025 Rule 4 draft, formerly known as the June amateur draft, on July 13 and 14. The Toronto Blue Jays selected JoJo Parker with the eighth overall pick and made 19 selections in total. For complete coverage of Toronto's draft, this website is the place to be. The reader can review a scouting report for each draftee, along with additional insights about the player.

The 2025 draft was the 10th during the Ross Atkins regime. Concerning first picks, the Blue Jays' highest pick slot was fifth (Austin Martin in 2020) and their lowest was 23rd (Brandon Barriera in 2022). For the 2016-2024 period, the average slot number of Toronto’s first pick was 17.

The consensus from various media outlets is that the Blue Jays under Atkins have not drafted well. Analysts have pointed to selections such as T.J. Zeuch and Martin as proof that Toronto has drafted poorly under Atkins. Let’s examine the reasonableness of the "Atkins has drafted poorly" opinion.

The Coin Flip

Quote

It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.
-Yogi Berra

How to assess a draft record? Many people use hindsight to evaluate draft results and often express an opinion that resembles, “The decision to draft Player X was bad/poor/good/great.” In my opinion, hindsight should not be used to assess the quality of draft selections. The reason is that when a team makes a draft pick, the front office is knowingly using incomplete information. In other words, draft selections are made with substantial uncertainty. Accordingly, after the fact, it is valid to opine whether a draft pick worked out or not, but not whether it was good or bad.

In a previous article, I used the coin flip example to illustrate my point. Suppose someone offers you a coin-flip opportunity. You can pick heads or tails, and you select heads. If the coin comes up heads, you win $5; if it comes up tails, you pay $2. Given that the odds are 50/50 that the coin flip will be heads, you calculate your expected value to be $1.50 (50% of $5 less 50% of $2). So then, you agree to the bet. The person who made the offer flips the coin, and it lands on tails. You lose $2. Did you make a good decision? Yes, because your expected value of the bet was +$1.50. Unfortunately, your decision did not work out.

The same approach should be used to evaluate drafts. Therefore, I will proceed to assess whether Toronto's drafting under Atkins has been successful. In other words, whether Toronto's drafts have worked out. I will exclude the 2025 MLB Draft from the analysis.

To evaluate how Toronto’s 2016-2024 draft record compares to that of other teams, I compiled a list of drafted and signed players. For each player, I took note of his career Baseball Reference WAR as of July 13, 2025 (the last game before the All-Star Game break). Furthermore, I ignored players with negative bWAR because I wanted to avoid distorting a team’s record. Concerning the bWAR approach, there are two limitations to consider:

• Similar to a rate-of-return calculation, bWAR results are end-date sensitive. For example, Team A’s bWAR may exceed Team B’s at the All-Star Game break, but it may not after the 2026 season. A reason why Team B’s bWAR total may ultimately surpass Team A’s bWAR is that some of Team B’s selections (from college or high school) are just making their way onto MLB rosters, whereas Team A's picks arrived on the MLB scene sooner.
• All things being equal, a college player, who may not ultimately generate as much bWAR as a high schooler, is more likely to be on an MLB roster sooner and begin accumulating bWAR. Hence, Team A’s draft record may temporarily be higher than Team B’s because Team A drafted more college players.

However, despite these limitations, bWAR is a good, objective measure of a team’s drafting success. Onto Table 1!

Table 1 highlights are as follows:

• Under Atkins, the Blue Jays have drafted and signed 16 players who have generated positive bWAR (for any team), which ranks 20th.
• Those players have produced a combined 46.7 bWAR, MLB’s 16th highest total.
• Concerning total bWAR, the top three teams are the Cardinals, Guardians and Dodgers.
• It is noteworthy that the average pick numbers of the first selections of the Cardinals, Guardians and Dodgers are 20, 17 and 27, respectively.
• Also, because of prospect promotion incentive picks and compensation picks, some teams will have additional selections that occur before the second round. Please refer to the 2024 draft order for an illustration.
• Some teams (for example, the Dodgers) will have their first-round pick dropped 10 spots because the team exceeded the competitive balance tax threshold. Please refer to the 2022 draft order for an explanation.
• After accounting for the additional picks and those falling into the second round, the Cardinals, Guardians and Dodgers had 11, 13 and 11 first-round picks, respectively. Toronto had 10.

Another aspect of the Atkins regime’s draft record to explore is the players drafted under Atkins who have the highest and second-highest bWARs, and how they compare to the most productive draft picks by other teams. Consider Table 2 and Table 3.

Table 2 shows that Bo Bichette (drafted in 2016) has produced the highest bWAR of any player drafted by Toronto from 2016 to 2024. That bWAR mark ranks as the sixth highest. As demonstrated in Table 3, Alek Manoah’s 7.3 bWAR ranks as the 18th highest among each team’s second-highest bWAR of drafted players.

It is noteworthy that the Blue Jay names on Tables 2 and 3 were drafted before Shane Farrell became Toronto’s director of amateur scouting, a role he held from 2020 to 2024. Bichette was drafted when Brian Parker held Farrel’s position, and Toronto selected Manoah in the 2019 MLB Draft when Steve Sanders (2017-2019) was in the Director’s chair. Toronto’s current director of amateur scouting is Marc Tramuta. It will be interesting to see if the team's drafting will be more successful with Tramuta at the helm.

Furthermore, as of July 13, 2025, the only Toronto draft pick taken after 2019 to generate a positive bWAR is Matt Swanson (0.3), currently with the Cardinals.. From a strictly bWAR perspective, Toronto’s post-2019 picks have generally not worked out. However, there is some good news that will soften the harshness of my previous comment. Arjun Nimmala (2023) and Trey Yesavage (2024) are Baseball America’s 42nd and 69th-ranked prospects, respectively.

 

First-Round Picks
Except for Manoah, Atkins's front office has not selected a player in the first round who has a positive career bWAR. If I were to use hindsight, I would judge Toronto’s record of first-round picks to be terrible. However, as I noted earlier, hindsight is not a suitable basis for evaluating decisions made with incomplete and imperfect information. Accordingly, let’s play the "what if?" game.

To play this game, substitute the name of Baseball America’s best-available undrafted player (when it was Toronto’s turn to make a selection) for each of Toronto’s first-round picks. Lo and behold, Table 4. If the Blue Jays had used Baseball America’s list, the total bWAR generated by those draftees would be 1.9, more than the team's actual 4.4. By this method, Toronto’s notable misses were Manoah instead of Bryson Stott, and Jordan Groshans in place of Matthew Libatore. However, the total 1.9 bWAR delta is not significant. Therefore, based on the Baseball America best-available-draftee method, Toronto’s first-round picks (2016-2024) have not worked out, but the margin is slight.

Conclusion
Overall, the Atkins regime’s drafts have worked out, but have also failed to meet expectations. Why do I say this? 

Team president Mark Shapiro said in 2018, “… you need to have waves of talent coming, and you need to have dozens of prospects — not two, three, five prospects.” In my opinion, the Atkins regime has not fully delivered on Shapiro’s goal. Yes, Toronto’s draft picks have produced 46.7 bWAR, the 16th most in MLB. However, given the draft results of the Cardinals, Guardians and Dodgers, I expected draft results closer to the top five rather than a cromulent 16th.

In fairness, due to COVID-19 and the resulting difficulties in evaluating prospects, the 2020 draft presented challenges to all teams, including the Blue Jays with the fifth overall pick. Additionally, in 2022 and 2023, Toronto’s first picks were high school players (Barriera and Nimmala), who typically take longer to reach MLB than college players do. However, all things considered, the Atkins regime’s draft record is disappointing because it has not surpassed the high bar established by Shapiro.

The Last Word
Concerning the evaluation of a team’s draft record, a hindsight-based opinion, whether the record is good or poor, is not reasonable. Why? Because there is uncertainty inherent in draft selections when a team makes each pick. The coin-flip example illustrates this point. Hence, a hindsight-based opinion on whether a draft record is good or bad is the result of a flawed evaluation method. A better approach is to assess whether the team’s drafting has been successful.

The bWAR generated by the Blue Jays’ selections ranks in the middle of the pack, which is better than many may realize. Additionally, there have been recent positive developments (Nimmala, Yesavage, and the emergence of 2018’s Addison Barger). However, the team's publicly stated objective to acquire and develop 'waves of prospects' has not been fully realized.  Therefore, in my opinion, the Atkins regime’s drafting has been moderately successful, which is below expectations.

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[mphenhef]

There has long been a story that the leftovers from AA's regime had to fight with Atkin's and his people to be able to draft Bo as Shatkins and their people didn't like him.  If that's true, and you discount his numbers a lot of these ranks go WAY down.

[Bob Ritchie]

My view is that what happens during the Atkins Regime is their responsibility. One should not pick and choose from things that went well or did not. Additionally, the Bichette pick was ultimately made, which is a positive organizational move. Despite differing views held by the superior, the person given the authority to make the decision (the Scouting Director) did so.