AJ Burnett and Marco Scutaro Continue to Help the Blue Jays

A. J. Burnett and Marco Scutaro are two players that the Blue Jays desperately tried to re-sign but they ultimately went on to leave the team as free agents; Burnett after the 2008 season and Scutaro after the 2009 season.  While both players have gone on to have some ups and downs in the following years and neither stayed with their new organizations for the entire length of the contracts they signed, the real benefit to the Blue Jays was the draft pick compensation they received in return for losing both players.

For losing A.J. Burnett the Blue Jays received a 1st round supplemental pick and New York's 3rd round draft choice in the 2009 first year player draft.  With these picks they selected James Paxton as the supplemental pick and Jake Marisnick with NY's 3rd round pick.  Unfortunately they were unable to sign Paxton and therefore received a similar supplemental round draft pick in the 2010 draft which they used to select Noah Syndergaard.

For losing Marco Scutaro the Blue Jays received a 1st round supplemental pick and Boston's 2nd round draft choice in the 2010 first year player draft.  With these picks the Blue Jays selected Aaron Sanchez and Justin Nicolino.

Therefore to summarize, for the loss of Burnett and Scutaro as free agents the Blue Jays received draft pick compensation that resulted in the following players:
1. Noah Syndergaard
2. Jake Marisnick
3. Aaron Sanchez
4. Justin Nicolino

For those of you not familiar with the Jays minor league system, Syndergaard, Sanchez and Nicolino all pitched for Class A Lansing in 2012 and may be the teams top three pitching prospects as they have combined to record 22 wins against 10 losses over 268 innings pitched with 288 strike outs, a 2.65 ERA and a 1.13 WHIP.    After watching Syndergaard and Sanchez pitch this season Pat Hentgen, who is now a special assistant in the Blue Jays organization, compared  the two pitchers to Roy Halladay and  Chris Carpenter.  The trio have also recently been featured here in a Toronto Star article.

Jake Marisnick who was recently promoted to double A New Hampshire is a top center field prospect who Baseball America recently listed as the 37th best prospect in baseball and one spot ahead of the Blue Jays Anthony Gose.

As it turns out the failure to sign A.J. Burnett and Marco Scutaro could be one of the best things to happen to the Blue Jays and may continue to pay dividends for team over the next decade.

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