Jonatan (no h) Clase is a 22-year-old (23 in May) switch-hitting outfielder who came to the Jays in a trade (along with minor league catcher Jacob Sharp) with the Mariners for Yimi Garcia. Garcia is back with the Jays, so we got Clase for nine innings of relief work.
Clase was #10 on the Mariners’ MLB Pipeline prospect list in 2024. And they put him seventh on the Blue Jays prospect list after the trade.
His best tool is his speed. In 94 Triple-A games in 2023, he stole 38 bases. He has stolen 219 bases in 407 games in his five minor league seasons. His speed is his best tool on defense, too. He doesn’t always take the best routes on fly balls, but his speed makes up for his mistakes. MLB Pipeline calls it 70-grade speed.
He has decent power despite his size (BR has him at 5’10”, I’m guessing he’s a bit short of that and 150 pounds). He hit 20 home runs in 129 minor league games in 2023 and 12 in 94 this past year.
Jonatan strikes out a fair bit (around 27% strikeout rate in the minors), with a walk rate around 13%.
Clase got into 26 major league games last year, hitting .246/.33/.328 with 1 home run, 3 walks and 17 strikeouts in 66 PA.
I think Clase could be a good fourth-outfield type, and maybe more so if his approach improves a little at the plate and he makes better contact. It was Otis Nixon’s birthday a few days ago….I think Clase could be a better version of Nixon, but then players like Nixon don’t tend to get the same chances as they would back in the day. It is much harder to make the majors on just speed, but Clase has some power and could be a reasonable player, given time.
That’s another difference between then and now; Nixon, in his first three seasons, had a .202/.249/.251 batting line in 166 games. By that point, now, you would be moving on. His next couple of seasons weren’t much better, .232/.328/.286 (five seasons in, he had a -1.0 bWAR), but teams won’t give a player that much time to figure things out now.
Steamer figures Clase will get into 21 games, 123 PA, and have a .220/.291/.353 line with 3 home runs, 10 walks, 34 strikeouts and 7 steals.