Blue Jays pitching prospect Jake Bloss will undergo UCL surgery. The club announced the news to reporters, including Mitch Bannon of The Athletic. He’ll be out for the rest of this year and part of 2026 as well.
Though Bloss’ experience in the majors thus far is quite limited, his loss is nonetheless a notable blow to Toronto’s depth. The 23-year-old was one of three players — arguably the top player — the Jays received in last summer’s trade sending Yusei Kikuchi to Houston. Bloss, a 2023 third-rounder, made his MLB debut with the ’Stros last year and was roughed up for nine runs on 16 hits and three walks in 11 2/3 frames. That said, he turned in a terrific 3.18 ERA with a solid 23.3% strikeout rate and a 9.5% walk rate in 93 1/3 innings between High-A, Double-A and Triple-A last year.
With that showing in the upper minors and a taste of big league action already under his belt, Bloss felt on the cusp of breaking through with a real MLB opportunity. The Jays opened the season with Kevin Gausman, Jose Berrios, Chris Bassitt, Max Scherzer and Bowden Francis in the rotation, leaving him without a real spot, but Bloss stood as one of the top depth options in the event of injury.
Had Bloss performed well, he might well have been the very first man up. However, the right-hander was tagged for eight runs in eight spring innings and hasn’t looked right since the calendar flipped to the regular season. Bloss served up eight runs (albeit only three of them earned) in four innings during this year’s Triple-A debut. He followed that with another 10 earned runs in 7 1/3 innings across his next two starts. Fast forward three more starts — the most recent featuring another four earned runs in just 3 1/3 innings — and Bloss is more than halfway to last year’s total of 33 earned runs despite having pitched only about one quarter as many innings.
Today’s announcement lends a likely explanation for the struggles Bloss has endured so far. He now becomes the latest Jays prospect of note to undergo a notable surgery, joining Ricky Tiedemann (Tommy John surgery last year), T.J. Brock (Tommy John surgery in January) and Adam Macko (meniscus surgery in February) in that regard. Toronto is also still waiting on Alek Manoah’s return from last year’s UCL procedure.
Bloss won’t turn 24 until June. He’s in the second of three minor league option years. There’s plenty of time for him to return as a meaningful contributor to the Jays over the long haul. In the short term, however, his struggles and the injury that ostensibly caused them further thin out a depth chart that’s already dotted with notable injuries.
The Blue Jays recently signed Spencer Turnbull and Jose Ureña to major league deals. Ureña has already made a pair of starts. Turnbull will need to build up. Toronto also picked up Connor Overton on a minor league deal and could search for further depth along those lines. They’ve also given lefty Easton Lucas a quartet of starts, two of which were terrific and two of which were disastrous, with the end result being a 7.41 ERA.
Since Bloss was on optional assignment, he isn’t currently accruing major league pay or service time. The Jays could potentially call him up and place him on the major league 60-day injured list. Doing so would allow them to open a 40-man roster spot but would also mean Bloss starts to earn that big league pay and service. Bloss came into this year with 39 days of service time, putting him 133 short of the one-year mark. There are still 138 days left in the season. Even if the Jays want to open a 40-man spot by calling up Bloss, they probably won’t do so in the next week.
Why does this happen to the Jays minor league pitchers in the upper level. Hard to develop pitchers when they have to the 18 months off.
Every teams minor league prospects deal with it. Jays just have had a run of bad luck with Manoha, Ricky T, Barriera, and Mako have all come down with major surgery’s within the last year. 3 of those guys are former 1st rounders and Mako was a decent prospect
At least Mako is back pitching in rookie ball.
I very much doubt that the Jays ruined his UCL in this short of a timeframe.
I’m sure lots of teams have just as many injured prospects and pitchers, it’s just more noticeable because jays have zero prospect depth
At least all their pitching prospects are spreading out their UCL injuries
I wonder how soon before we’re amazed a pitcher has only had 3 TJ surgeries in his lifetime.
*elbow surgeries just to be safe 😉
It makes you want to ask the question about all clubs and all starters,
Where are the the healthy major league pitchers of old? – those with 200+ innings every year with lots of complete games.
Where have they gone?
Optics. Media will use 200 innings as a story to drive a narrative that the team misused/overused a star pitcher. It is pure crap but MLB teams do not want the smoke. They’d rather keep a job and monitor innings than do the right thing and properly build pitchers for stamina and location.
Arms are not built to withstand the speed they throw pitches now. Throwing 90 mph in the 70s was a flamethrower. Fastballs average over 92 mph nowadays.