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Toronto Blue Jays' Top Prospect Wins Prestigious AFL Award

Toronto Blue Jays' Top prospect Ricky Tiedemann was named the Pitcher of the Year in the Arizona Fall League.
Brady Farkas|
Toronto Blue Jays' Top Prospect Wins Prestigious AFL Award
Toronto Blue Jays' Top Prospect Wins Prestigious AFL Award

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Toronto Blue Jays

The Arizona Fall League has concluded for 2023 and Toronto Blue Jays top prospect Ricky Tiedemann was named the AFL Pitcher of the Year.

It was important for Tiedemann to get some innings in the AFL after he missed much of the actual season with injury. He threw 18.0 innings in the AFL season, registering a 2.50 ERA and striking out 23 batters.

He is the No. 1 prospect in the organization and is ranked No. 31 in all of baseball.

Per a portion of his MLB.com prospect profile:

While he sat around 93-94 mph as an amateur, the 6-foot-4 lefty started being around 95-96 mph, touching higher, with his heater after adding muscle in the offseason. The pitch has some sink to it as well and helped Tiedemann force healthy amounts of ground-ball contact. That said, his mid-80s, diving changeup has become arguably his best pitch with the way it generates whiffs, and that helped him limit righties to a .153 average in 2022. His low-80s, sweeping slider shows plus potential, though it needs to be a little more consistent to give Tiedemann his true third weapon.

He started 15 games this minor league season but was only able to register 44 innings total. He went 0-5 record-wise and posted a 3.68 ERA. Armed with elite strikeout stuff, he fanned 82 batters in those 44 innings.

The Jays will enter the 2024 season with Jose Berrios, Kevin Gausman, Yusei Kikuchi and Chris Bassitt in the rotation. Tiedemann likely won't earn the No. 5 spot, as Alek Manoah appears to have a leg up there, but we could see him debut at some point next year.

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Brady Farkas
BRADY FARKAS

Brady Farkas is a baseball writer for Fastball on Sports Illustrated/FanNation and the host of 'The Payoff Pitch' podcast which can be found on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Videos on baseball also posted to YouTube. Brady has spent nearly a decade in sports talk radio and is a graduate of Oswego State University. You can follow him on Twitter @WDEVRadioBrady. 

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