With Ricky Tiedemann, Sem Robberse and Chad Dallas on the Vancouver Canadians, you may have never heard of Alejandro Melean.
It’s understandable, really. Prior to this season, the 21-year-old righty never put up spectacular results, but he’s been absolutely killing it with the Canadians this season. Let’s start with the previous years.
Background:
The Blue Jays signed Alejandro Melean out of Venezuela during the 2017-2018 International Free Agent period for $775,000, according to MLB’s official site.
This period saw the Jays sign former top 5 Jays prospect, Eric Pardinho for $1.4 million. The team also signed current number six prospect Leonardo Jimenez ($825,000) and their twelfth ranked prospect, Miguel Hiraldo ($750,000).
While this wasn’t quite as good as the previous season (Alejandro Kirk Gabriel Moreno, Lourdes Gurriel Jr, Otto Lopez), the Jays had a solid period in terms of adding a lot of solid prospects.
It wasn’t a great start:
In his first professional season with the state-side rookie league team, Melean posted a 4.68 ERA and 5.86 FIP in 32.2 innings pitched. There were worrisome signs, as his BB/9 sat at 6.06 while his K/9 was a solid 8.54.
Melean pitched with the Rookie Advanced Bluefield Blue Jays and once again struggled. In 21 innings pitched, he had a 5.57 ERA and a 5.06 FIP. While his K/9 increased to 10.71, his BB/9 had a slight increase to 6.43, meaning he was struggling to keep runners off the bases.
Melean pitched at two different levels in 2021 and showed improvements. He started the season with Low A Dunedin, posting a …
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Author: Brennan Delaney / Blue Jays Nation
