Rowdy Tellez: Future Outlook

Coming out of Elk Grove High School in California, Ryan John Tellez or now known as “Rowdy” was a 2013 Rawlings First team All-American, Baseball America High School All-American and Rawlings/perfect game All-Regions First Team. Entering the Draft Rowdy Tellez was the 59th best player available in the 2013 MLB Draft according to Baseball America. But due to his scholarship he slid all the way down to the 30th round to the Toronto Blue Jays. The Blue Jays would end up giving Tellez the most ever paid to a post 10th round draft choice at the time with a signing bonus of $850,000.

Since joining the Blue Jays system he has been one of the teams better 1B prospects putting up solid numbers in the minor leagues, apart from a down 2017 season which Rowdy said that his mother struggling with her fight against brain cancer put a lot on his mind and his focus was more on family over baseball, Something all of of the baseball world can understand. But after talking with his mother about everything, he would go on to have a bounce back year in 2018 at the Tripe-A level with a .270/.340/.425, and would be called up to the Major leagues 2 weeks after his mother's death in August. After a slow start Tellez would turn it on in the month of September with a .314/.329/.614 which included 9 doubles.

In 2019 Tellez was just too good for the Triple-A level putting up a .366/.450/.688 line with 7 homers in 26 games which lead to him getting the call up. Tellez would split time at 1B/DH with Justin Smoak and had a mixed bag in his first official year in the big leagues. His numbers don’t light up the eyes of viewers but there are more improvements in his game to come.

Many will see what he did in his very limited sample size in 2018 and automatically say this was a terrible year. His end of season slash line for 2019 looked like this: .227/.293/.449 with a BB/K% of 7.1%/28.4%. With 21 homers added to that slash, although it wasn’t a great year it certainly wasn’t terrible by any means. His hot run in 2018 had some outliers and he was due for some regression in his line. The BABIP during his hot stretch was ranked 4th in the league at .391 (Min. 70 PA, Tellez ended 2018 with 73PA). That number was unsustainable and dropped down to .267 in the 2019 season where he would appear in 111 games and have 409 Plate appearances.

Looking at Tellez it isn’t a shocker to know that he is a prototypical first baseman that isn’t relied on for his speed and more for his bat. But with his bat there comes a few holes in his game that he will look to improve on this season. One of those missions is going to be learning to hit the breaking pitches and lay off of off-speed/breaking pitches down and below the strike-zone. His 2019 slash on breaking pitches which he saw 32.3% of the time was eye opening for the wrong reasons, .137/.359/.224 with a 36% strikeout rate. That issue was the main issue of his batting average and if he is able to either lay off those breaking pitches or learn to make contact on them it would be surprising to see that batting average creep up towards the .240-.250 range which ties into a positive of teller. Although he doesn’t tear the cover off the ball, Tellez this season was ranked in the 80th percentile in exit velocity while also being in the 68th percentile of hard hit%. To put that into perspective those numbers rank higher than Blue Jay power bat and teammate Randal Grichuk and also ranks ahead of this guy named Nolan Arenado. His barrel% (balls hit over 98mph with a launch angle of 26-30 degrees) was in the top 10% of the league and that wasn’t even with a full season of at bats.

To summarize everything I think Rowdy Tellez could be a solid 1B for the Blue Jays that at his best could hit 30 home runs as well as not kill the team with a low batting average. My player comparison for Rowdy teller is fellow 1B Matt Adams who at his best provided teams with 20 home runs and an average upwards of .260-.270.