Nolan Perry’s 2026 season gave the Blue Jays exactly the kind of breakout MLB.com was looking for.
Toronto’s right-hander went from an arm with some intrigue to a pitcher who forced his way onto the conversation as the organization’s breakout prospect, and the numbers back it up. After missing all of 2025 while recovering from Tommy John surgery, Perry returned in 2026 and climbed through three levels while missing bats at every stop.
Perry’s path to this point started in New Mexico, where he attended Carlsbad High School before the Blue Jays drafted him in the 12th round of the 2022 MLB Draft. He had been committed to Texas Tech, but Toronto signed him for $200,000 to keep him out of college.
He came into pro ball with a four-pitch mix - fastball, curveball, slider and splitter - and the surgery seemed to come with a bump in stuff. MLB Pipeline said his fastball averages 94 mph, his slider sits in the mid-80s, his curveball comes in at 78-81 mph and his splitter is thrown in the mid-80s.
The early pro results were uneven. Perry didn’t debut until 2023, and his first season in the Florida Complex League was rough on paper: a 7.28 ERA and 1.62 WHIP over 38.1 innings.
But there were signs the stat line was a little misleading. Opponents hit .284 against him, yet his .393 BABIP suggested plenty of those balls were finding holes.
He also showed real strikeout ability while limiting walks, with his 19.4 K-BB% ranking seventh among FCL pitchers with at least 30 innings. His 51.4% left-on-base rate and 4.05 FIP pointed to some bad luck along the way.
Perry moved to Low-A Dunedin in 2024 and was better in limited work. Over 14 games and 46 innings, he posted a 2.93 ERA, 1.61 WHIP and 57 strikeouts.
The encouraging part was what happened when he was healthy: opponents hit just .210 off him and his 76.2% left-on-base rate was a major improvement from the year before. Still, there were warning signs, too.
His walk rate jumped from 8.9% in 2023 to 18.8% in 2024, and his .306 BABIP was close to league average. Then Tommy John surgery ended his season and wiped out 2025 entirely.
When Perry returned in 2026, he looked like a different pitcher.
He opened back in Low-A and was dominant right away, putting up a 1.71 ERA and 0.67 WHIP with 32 strikeouts in 21 innings over five games. His 33.3 K-BB% ranked third among pitchers with at least 20 innings, trailing only Pirates top pitching prospect Seth Hernandez at 41.3% and Charlie Christensen of the Detroit Tigers at 33.6%.
The promotion to High-A didn’t slow him down much. In seven games there, Perry logged a 3.23 ERA and 1.24 WHIP across 30.2 innings while striking out 46. His 27.8 K-BB% ranked second among Northwest League pitchers with at least 30 innings.
Double-A brought another step forward. In nine games, Perry posted a 2.32 ERA and 1.03 WHIP over 31 innings and struck out 39 batters. The walks ticked up, but the strikeouts kept coming, and his 32.2% strikeout rate finished in the top 20 among Eastern League pitchers with at least 30 innings.
That production earned him a Futures Game appearance during All-Star week, a fitting nod for a pitcher who kept showing he belonged.
There are still things Perry has to sharpen. His control has to hold as he moves up, because the walk rate climbed at each level.
And if he’s going to stick as a starter, the splitter needs to keep developing. But after using the lost time in 2025 to get stronger and improve, Perry made the kind of leap that turns a prospect from interesting into important.
He is Rule 5 eligible this offseason, and after the season he put together, he’s expected to be added to the 40-man roster. If everything keeps moving the way it did in 2026, Perry has a real chance to work his way into the Blue Jays rotation.
In Other News...
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Tigers Rotation Picture Just Got More Interesting With Their Newest Arm
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Across the AL, the rotation picture is shifting in other places too. Boston punched its postseason ticket even in a loss to Tampa Bay, while Detroit is turning to right-hander River Ryan, a recent acquisition from Los Angeles, for its upcoming game. It is the kind of late-season movement that can change how a contender lines up the final stretch, and Toronto will be watching closely as the pieces keep moving around them. [Read more 🡒]