Wednesday Bantering: Robertson Up

A Wednesday day game. Weekday day games miss with my rhythm. Spencer Turnbull gets the start.

There are bits of pregame Jays:

• Max Scherzer will start for the Bisons on Friday. He’ll throw 60-65 pitches. If all goes well, I imagine they would have him do another rehab start before, hopefully, getting activated, but we’ll see.
• Outfielder Will Robertson (lots of ‘danger danger’ jokes in our future) is in St. Louis. Nathan Lukes goes on the 7-day concussion IL. He’s hitting .288/.408/.583 with 12 home runs, 32 walks and 46 strikeouts. He’s 27, so old for a prospect, but it would be nice to see what he can do. So, of course, he’ll sit on the bench beside Alan Roden. He’s another lefty batter. He was the International League player of the week last week.

He was mentioned among our Top 5 Older Prospects:

Robertson had a big spring, going 4 for 11 with a pair of home runs during his time in MLB camp. Signed out of Creighton as a 4th round pick in 2019, Robertson’s power has pushed him steadily through the system to Buffalo, where he played all of last season. It’s easy plus raw, with a 112.8mph max exit velocity and a hard hit rate that would be in the 81st percentile in MLB. He gets to it in games with a pull-oriented swing that peppers line drives off and over the right field wall. He can get aggressive, though, and as with Tirotta excessive in-zone swing and miss will prevent his power from playing in the majors. He’s also a slow runner and thus a below average corner outfield defender. It’s possible that some refinement in his approach allows him to be an occasional lefty power source off a bench, but he has significant work to do to get to that point.

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Yesterday’s Umpire Scorecard:

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Today’s lineup, against a lefty. No Roden again. No Gimenez either, against the lefty.

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Baseball America says some nice things about the Jays farm system. Something we haven’t seen in years.

One player they mentioned is Khai Stephan:

Khal Stephen, RHP, Blue Jays: Stephen may be at a new level, but so far he’s delivering the same results. He threw six scoreless innings for High-A Vancouver on Tuesday while scattering six hits, and his nine strikeouts led all Top 30 pitchers across the minors.

Stephen now owns a 2.25 ERA and 25 strikeouts over 20 innings since Toronto bumped him up to High-A last month. And while he quickly showed he was too advanced for Low-A as a 2024 second-round pick out of Mississippi State, Stephen dominated there, too. Stephen gets after hitters with a mid-90s fastball that has tons of carry, and he shows impressive feel for a deep five-pitch arsenal.