TORONTO — After a lengthy negotiation, the Blue Jays and first-round pick Trey Yesavage reached an agreement. The Blue Jays signed 19 draft picks and 11 non-drafted players from the 2024 class. Yesavage was among them.

This group is currently at Toronto’s player development base in Dunedin, Fla., as part of a 10- to 14-day program to get everyone adjusted.

“We’re excited that we were able to lean into a lot of player development traits that we’re valuing, a lot of size, physicality, fastball shape and strikes with this group,” said Shane Farrell, the Blue Jays’ director of amateur scouting.

Part of this camp is about setting baselines, too. The Blue Jays can use their fancy new pitching lab to establish how much a pitcher’s slider breaks. They can have a hitter step into the cage to measure their bat speed or capture video of how their hips move through a swing. This is all “day one” data, a starting point for the player development staff to begin from.

It’s a long journey from here, but Toronto’s farm system is reaching a crucial point in this organization’s timeline. The Blue Jays don’t just need a development success story … they need a dozen.

Draft 2024: Blue Jays select RHP Trey Yesavage No. 20

Draft and develop
The group in charge of the Draft (amateur scouting) is different from the player development team, who will work directly with these players beginning in Dunedin, but the two groups maximize their usefulness when they collaborate.

“That’s something we’ve really tried to adjust and evolve over the years, like a handoff between amateur scouting and the Draft to our player development folks,” Farrell said. “That’s really important, making sure that everyone is up to speed on the strengths and weaknesses we’re seeing in a player, what development opportunities we’re seeing on the scouting side, then the player development group taking that and running with it.”

All eyes will be on the top of the class — as they always are — where the Blue Jays landed Yesavage with the 20th overall pick out of East Carolina and right-hander Khal Stephen in the second round out of Mississippi State, but both carried heavy workloads in their final NCAA seasons.

“Given the amount they threw, I wouldn’t expect them to rush to an affiliate and pitch much this season, if at all,” Farrell said. “I think the important thing is getting a better understanding of who they are, their work ethic and things like that.”