Brandon Valenzuela is a 25-year-old switch-hitting catcher born in Hermosillo, Mexico (he has a good role model as a Mexican-born catcher in Kirk). The Blue Jays picked him up from the Padres in trade for Will Wagner. MLB.com has Valenzuela as #24 on their Jays top 30 prospect list. He was added to the Jays\u2019 40-man last November.<\/p>\n
The Padres signed him as a 16-year-old in 2017 for a $100,000 signing bonus. He has all three options left.<\/p>\n
Last year, splitting time between Double-A San Antonio and Triple-A Buffalo, he hit .224\/.309\/.383 with 15 home runs. As a switch-hitter, he\u2019s been pretty even on each side (last year a .725 OPS vs. LHP and .680 vs. RHP). He struck out a lot (24.0% of the time) but then walked a fair bit (10.9%). He has a bit of pop.<\/p>\n
But offense isn\u2019t what has put on prospect lists. His defense is what has him on the edge of a major league job. Last year, he threw out 34% of baserunners. He\u2019s said to good at blocking balls in the dirt and that he calls a good game.<\/p>\n
The switch-hitting Valenzuela is a glove-first catcher without a lot of offensive upside. Valenzuela\u2019s righthanded swing is better than his lefthanded swing, leading to average results against lefthanded pitching. He shows below-average contact skills with an advanced approach that should lead to at least an average walk rate. There will be a fair amount of strikeouts as Valenzuela is a well below-average contact hitter against righthanded pitching. He hit 15 home runs in 2025 and shows fringe-average game power. To Valenzuela\u2019s credit he has average exit velocity data with lofty launch angles. Behind the plate he\u2019s a plus defender with an above-average arm that keeps runners in check<\/p>\n
He\u2019s having a good spring, with 4 hits and 3 walks, in 12 at-bats, and, to my eyes, has looked good behind the plate.<\/p>\n
If Tyler Heineman hits like he did last year (and he\u2019s also a good defensive catcher) and stays healthy, we won\u2019t see much of Valenzuela, but if Heineman goes back to hitting the way he has in the past, well, the team is still likely to stay with the catcher they know. Then, catchers do tend to hit the IL at some point during a season, and Brandon would be next in line. Ali S\u00e1nchez got into 20 MLB games last year.<\/p>\n
Valenzuela is nine years younger than Heineman. All things being equal, I\u2019d rather have Valenzuela on the major league team than Heineman, but Tyler would likely either retire or look for a job with another team if the Jays wanted to send him down. Valenzuela pretty much has to do whatever the Jays tell him to.<\/p>\n
Heineman didn\u2019t get his first MLB at-bat until he was 28. And, before the age of 30, Heineman only played 20 games. If Brandon doesn\u2019t get any major league time this year, he\u2019s got lots of time to \u2018make it\u2019.<\/p>\n
Steamer figures he\u2019ll play 8 games this season, hitting .201\/.272\/.315 with 1 home run.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brandon Valenzuela is a 25-year-old switch-hitting catcher born in Hermosillo, Mexico (he has a good role model as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2378],"tags":[5,377,2554,4,282,70,38962,2553],"class_list":{"0":"post-611850","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto-blue-jays","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-blue-jays","10":"tag-bluejays","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-toronto","13":"tag-toronto-blue-jays","14":"tag-toronto-blue-jays-opinions","15":"tag-torontobluejays"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116188632081003593","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}