SAN FRANCISCO – In the midst of the winter meetings frenzy last December, the Toronto Blue Jays’ baseball operations department gathered in a team suite to consider their pro scouting group’s annual Rule 5 draft presentation.

Coming off a World Series appearance and determined to make another run, the notion that they would select and carry a pick all season long seemed far-fetched. The club had plenty on the go, too, between signing Dylan Cease and Cody Ponce, working through health concerns for Shane Bieber and Jose Berrios, and the pursuits of Tyler Rogers and Kazuma Okamoto, while also monitoring the Kyle Tucker and Bo Bichette markets.

Still, their scouts were so intrigued by Spencer Miles during the Arizona Fall League that they pushed for his implausible selection. Despite just 10 games and 14.2 innings since the San Francisco Giants made him a fourth-round pick in 2022, they argued that he was ready to get outs in the majors.

“It's the job of scouting and baseball operations to present opportunities, no matter what's going on with the roster. Miles was that,” said Ryan Mittleman, the club’s vice-president, pro scouting. “The raw stuff was impressive to us. … We had multiple looks, multiple scouts to say, ‘Hey, the raw data is good, but also, he's carrying it out into a pretty good league.’ We didn't let the lack of innings be an impediment. We believed in the stuff. And it carried him to the top of our list.”

Manager John Schneider was in the room for the presentation and remembers “looking at his numbers and I was like, ‘He has how many innings? And what are we doing? And huh?’ They were like his sinker can do this, we think he can develop a slider. I think I said, ‘This guy better be pretty (expletive) good.”

The Blue Jays made Miles the 10th pick of the Rule 5 draft on........

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