Blaze Jordan may no longer be considered a teenager after celebrating his 20th birthday on Monday, but he is still one of the youngest and brightest prospects in the Red Sox farm system.
In 120 games between Low-A Salem and High-A Greenville this past season, Jordan batted .289/.363/.445 with 30 doubles, three triples, 12 home runs, 68 RBIs, 60 runs scored, five stolen bases, 48 walks, and 94 strikeouts over 521 total plate appearances.
The right-handed hitting infielder broke camp this spring with Salem, which is where he ended things last season. He slashed .287/.357/.446 with 29 doubles, three triples, eight homers, 57 runs driven in, 48 runs scored, four stolen bases, 37 walks, and 67 strikeouts in 95 games (415 plate appearances) with the Red Sox before earning a promotion to Greenville in early August.
While with the Drive for the remainder of the 2022 campaign, Jordan hit .301/.387/.441 with just one double, four home runs, 11 RBIs, 12 runs scored, one stolen base, 11 walks, and 27 strikeouts across 25 games spanning 106 trips to the plate.
Upon being promoted over the summer, Jordan was able to draw more walks, which in turn led to him getting on base more. He also punched out a higher clip (16.1 percent to 25.5 percent) and saw his power production curtail, so it was not necessarily the smoothest of transitions.
Still, Jordan was among the most productive hitters in the lower-minors and in the Red Sox organization this year. Of the 39 players in the system who reached the necessary number of plate appearances to qualify as a league leader, Jordan ranked seventh in strikeout rate (18.0 percent), 12th in swinging strike rate (14.0 percent), eighth in batting average, 15th in on-base percentage, 13th in slugging percentage, 11th in OPS (.808), 18th in isolated power (.156), eighth in line-drive rate (24.4 percent), and 12th in wRC+ (124), per FanGraphs.
Defensively, Jordan split time between first and third base at both of his stops this season. Altogether, the burly 6-foot-2, 220-pounder logged 402 2/3 innings at first and 499 1/3 innings at the hot corner. He committed six errors at each position and unsurprisingly posted a higher fielding percentage at first (.983) than he did at third (.939).
A native of Southaven, Miss., Jordan was originally selected by the Red Sox in the third round of the 2020 amateur draft out of DeSoto Central High School. He graduated a year early after reclassifying in 2019 and was committed to play college baseball at Mississippi State. But with the help of area scout Danny Watkins, Boston was able to sway Jordan away from his commitment by offering him a lucrative $1.75 million signing bonus.
Jordan officially put pen to paper that July, but he did not make his professional debut until the following June on account of the COVID-19 pandemic wiping out the 2020 minor-league season. He has since appeared in a total of 148 games across three different levels and owns a slash line of .296/.364/.472 to go along with 18 home runs and 94 RBIs in that span.
MLB Pipeline currently ranks Jordan as the No. 9 prospect in Boston’s farm system while SoxProspects.com has him at No. 15. He still has room to grow from a developmental point-of-view on both sides of the ball, but the potential — especially when it comes to his raw power — is certainly there.
If Jordan makes it through the winter without being involved in any sort of trade, he is projected to return to Greenville for the start of the 2023 season and would seemingly have the chance to make the jump to Double-A Portland at some point next summer.
(Picture of Blaze Jordan: Gwinn Davis/Greenville Drive)
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