Blue Jays’ prospect Kendry Rojas strikes out three in (likely) final AFL start

Left-hander Kendry Rojas has, in all likelihood, thrown his final pitch of the 2024 season.

The 21-year-old, the Toronto Blue Jays’ No. 11 top prospect per MLB Pipeline, completed his fifth and likely final start of the Arizona Fall League season on Tuesday versus the Mesa Solar Sox. He pitched 2.2 innings, allowing a pair of hits and walks while punching out three, throwing 54 pitches and landing 32 for strikes.

Rojas cruised through his first two innings of work, retiring six of his seven batters faced, with a one-out double in the top of the second as his only blemish. But the 6-foot-2 lefty ran into trouble with two outs in the third. He recorded two strikeouts to begin the frame before surrendering a double and consecutive walks to load the bases, ending his afternoon.

The Scottsdale Scorpions brought in reliever Jake Miller, a pitching prospect from the Detroit Tigers system, who struck out the next batter to end the third, keeping the game scoreless.

Entering Tuesday’s slate, the Scorpions sat second last in the AFL standings, needing to finish third or better to make the playoffs. But with the regular season concluding Thursday, they’d require a miracle to claim one of the three post-season seeds, thus likely signalling Rojas’ final outing of 2024.

In his Scorpions tenure, Rojas finishes with a 5.74 ERA across six appearances (five starts), registering 13 strikeouts and eight walks over 15.2 innings. He was assigned to the AFL after failing to log more than 62.2 innings during the regular season, hindered by a left shoulder injury that sidelined him for over two months.

The young southpaw’s 2024 campaign came to a halt after only two starts in April before beginning a rehab assignment in the Flordia Complex League in late June. Following a pair of outings, one with the rookie-level Blue Jays and the other at single-A Dunedin, he returned to high-A Vancouver in early July and enjoyed a strong finish to his injury-plagued year.

Over nine starts with the Canadians, Rojas posted a 2.16 ERA and 2.99 FIP with 56 strikeouts across 50 innings, putting a positive spin on the final stretch of his fourth professional campaign with the Blue Jays organization.