Blue Jays Pick Up Former Top Brewers Prospect As MiLB Rule 5 Pick
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The Toronto Blue Jays have been making moves this postseason which have primarily surrounded their pitching staff as they signed back Shane Bieber and added Dylan Cease as well as KBO MVP Cody Ponce.
The Jays' organization, as well as the other 29 teams, is down in Florida for the Winter Meetings and the ballclub is going to work towards filling the remaining holes in their roster, which doesn't just mean their 40-man roster, but also within the farm system.
The Rule 5 Draft is meant to keep players from getting lost in a team's minor league system, and the Blue Jays just picked up a Brewers' outfielder who was ranked as the third-best prospect at one point, Hedbert Perez.
Who is Hedbert Perez?
Perez is now 22 years old, so it is hard to believe that he has spent much time in professional baseball at any capacity. Still, he has, as he started playing in some sort of form as soon as he turned 18, as he bounced from the Rookie league to Single-A to Venezuela and everything in between.
The last three seasons, he has been in the system for Milwaukee between A+ and AA, but in 2025, he played in both AA and A+. He finished in A+ after struggling in AA where he slugged .250 and had an OPS barely over .600.
*Note* These stats are looking at only A+ in 2025 where he played in 84 games
- .209 Batting Average
- .330 On-Base Percentage
- .411 Slugging Percentage
- .705 OPS
- 61 Hits
- 11 Doubles
- 3 Triples
- 14 Home Runs
- 43 RBI
- 7 Stolen Bases
- 51 Drawn Walks.
Hedbert Perez with a 107 MPH nuke to right pic.twitter.com/Cv8p2TYOqh
— Spencer Michaelis (@smichaelis234) April 9, 2025
The most eye-catching stat for Perez in A+ this year is easily his slugging percentage, meaning when he does make contact, it is big. The Jays definitely like their bats, and with the best batting coach in baseball right now, it seems like a low-risk, high-reward gamble.
The work for the Blue Jays this offseason is far from over, even though they have done nothing but bolster easily their biggest weakness last season, the pitching staff. However there is still the question surrounding Bo Bichette, is he staying or is he leaving?
If he leaves, what is the ballclub going to do in order to make up the production that he has consistently shown at the plate as arguably their best all-around offensive weapon? Management still has its hands full, but it is definitely making strides.
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Maddy Dickens resides in Loveland, Colorado. She grew up with two older brothers, where their lives revolved around sports. She earned a master's degree in business management from Tarleton State University while simultaneously playing basketball and competing in rodeo at the collegiate level. She successfully parlayed a reserve national championship into a professional rodeo career and now stays involved in upper-level athletics by writing for On SI on several different MLB teams' pages, along with some NCAA sites.