{"id":672127,"date":"2026-04-10T03:00:27","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T03:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/672127\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T03:00:27","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T03:00:27","slug":"blue-jays-turning-23-year-old-into-a-2-way-player-who-can-hit-and-pitch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/672127\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Jays turning 23-year old into a 2-way player who can hit and pitch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blue Jays turning 23-year old into a 2-way player who can hit and pitch<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Toronto Blue Jays<\/a> might not have signed Shohei Ohtani<\/a> when he was a free agent before he landed with the Los Angeles Dodgers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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But they’re seeking to have their own two-way player in the future.<\/p>\n

The candidate’s name is Austin Smith, and the minor league outfielder made his first professional pitching appearance on Thursday at Single-A Dunedin.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Aaron Judge’s case as the greatest right-handed hitter of all time<\/a><\/p>\n

This isn’t a random move. Smith has done this before.<\/p>\n

The Blue Jays chose him in the 10th round of the 2025 MLB Draft out of the University of San Diego.<\/p>\n

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While in college, Smith played both ways well enough that he was a finalist for the John Olerud Award, which is given to the best two-way player in Division I baseball.<\/p>\n

Smith had a .305 career batting average as a college hitter with 20 home runs. He also had a 4.12 ERA in 53 outings on the mound for San Diego.<\/p>\n

The Blue Jays started Smith out as just an outfielder. He’s hit .261 entering action on Thursday with a .779 OPS.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Yankees outfielder once battled ostrich in 11-plate spaghetti-eating contest<\/a><\/p>\n

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Toronto evidently wants to give Smith the best chance to maximize his potential. This path could lead to him just choosing one down the road.<\/p>\n

Or maybe, just maybe, Smith shows that he can do both at a high level. Having a guy go both ways while at the MLB level feels like it gives you something to dream on.<\/p>\n

More MLB news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Blue Jays turning 23-year old into a 2-way player who can hit and pitch originally appeared on The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":672128,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2378],"tags":[106,37060,5,377,2554,5194,57,4,137,468,1414,282,70,2553,142],"class_list":{"0":"post-672127","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto-blue-jays","8":"tag-aaron-judge","9":"tag-austin-smith","10":"tag-baseball","11":"tag-blue-jays","12":"tag-bluejays","13":"tag-dunedin-blue-jays","14":"tag-los-angeles-dodgers","15":"tag-mlb","16":"tag-san-diego","17":"tag-shohei-ohtani","18":"tag-the-blue-jays","19":"tag-toronto","20":"tag-toronto-blue-jays","21":"tag-torontobluejays","22":"tag-yankees"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116378181494242363","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672127","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=672127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}