Dasan Hill Is the Newest Exciting Arm in the Blue Jays’ System
Of all the prospects Toronto acquired on deadline day, there's a strong argument that Hill is the best of the bunch.
Every single year, the MLB trade deadline brings out both the best and worst in teams around the league. For teams in the hunt for a playoff spot, the desire to upgrade can often outweigh the long-term consequences of going all-in.
To the same extent, the teams who are out of the race can take advantage of these opportunities to try to gain the upper hand in the long-term picture.
In 2026, these themes continued to reveal themselves, with multiple organizations going on to be big buyers and sellers at the deadline. However, the Toronto Blue Jays found themselves in a very interesting third position: a mixture of both.
While the Blue Jays sacrificed their top prospect, Arjun Nimmala, to acquire a potential front-end rotation piece in José Soriano, they also dealt from their ranks to acquire top talent. For example, they dealt Kevin Gausman and Jeff Hoffman to the Cubs and Twins, two teams that revealed themselves as big buyers at the deadline.
In the latter of those two deals, the Blue Jays acquired a decent prospect haul in return for Hoffman. The deal included three top-30 caliber prospects, with the biggest name being left-hander Dasan Hill, a fascinating flamethrower who has often caught the attention of scouts around the nation by touching the upper-90s with relative ease.
Out of all the prospects the Blue Jays acquired on deadline day, there’s a very good chance that Hill is the best of the bunch.
Meet Dasan Hill
The three players involved in the Hoffman deal were Dasan Hill, John Klein, and Dameury Pena. While this package was quite interesting for the Blue Jays, Hill is the runaway favorite of these three names when it comes to prospect lists around the industry.
Ahead of the 2024 MLB Draft, Hill was viewed as one of the most prized pitchers on the prep scene, making him a coveted asset for the Twins to land in Competitive Balance Round B at 69th overall. Flamethrowing lefties of Hill’s nature don’t come around often, especially with the raw tools he had already flashed at such a young age.
He’d spent his draft year working on refining his pitch mix in Florida at the Twins’ spring training facility, which really helped prepare him for the jump to affiliated baseball the next season. When he was tasked with his first pro assignment at 19 years old, Hill handled the transition pretty well.
He’d make 16 starts in Low-A at the start of the 2025 season, pitching to a 2.77 ERA with 68 strikeouts in 52 innings pitched. With his fastball averaging just shy of 96 mph and often flirting with triple digits, it was easy to see why the Twins were so excited about him coming out of the draft.
The only downside from this stint was his command, as Hill walked 33 batters in this 52-inning span, which was good for a walk rate near 15%. Despite this, the Twins still believed they had seen enough from the 19-year-old in Low-A to give him the bump to High-A.
This was the first time Hill ran into a decent amount of trouble as a professional. He’d record a 5.40 ERA across his first 10 innings at the level, while still posting high walk rates. In fact, that was arguably a key reason for his struggles, as his left-on-base rate had dropped significantly with this move.
Flushing this stint of poor play in late 2025, Hill was sent back to High-A to begin the 2026 season with a lot of the same themes at the forefront of his game. He made 16 starts at the level before being dealt to the Blue Jays, posting a 5.80 ERA with 77 strikeouts in 45 innings, while his walk rate crept up over 17%.
Through this entire period, though, Hill has maintained elite stuff. At 6-foot-5, he can produce decent extension and create funky angles for opposing hitters, which, when paired with his high velocity and sharp secondaries, produced plenty of whiffs.
Although it’s still early, every single sign is pointing toward the fact that Hill may be the next exciting arm in the Blue Jays system. The real challenge will come with improving his control, which may be possible with a change of scenery.
Breaking Down the Raw Tools
With the mostly encouraging results we’ve seen from Hill to this point, it’s easy to get excited about his future. Keeping this in mind, it’s still his raw stuff, frame, and pitchability that make him such a fascinating pickup for the Toronto Blue Jays.
Standing tall on the mound and throwing from the stretch, Hill attacks opponents with a funky, quick delivery. It’s a motion with a seemingly sudden speedup once he lifts his leg, as he almost throws from a slide-step type position most often. With Hill throwing hard and mixing his pitches quite well, it can make recognizing his offerings a tall task for opposing hitters.
Beginning with his fastball, it’s a pitch that pops out of his hand with elite velocity from moment one. As previously mentioned, he’s able to dial it up near triple digits from a more over-the-top release, creating a funky angle. While he struggles to locate it at times, it’s a sharp offering that’s arguably his best pitch.
From there, Hill’s go-to breaking ball is his slider, which has more movement than most. Although it appears to have a tighter shape, it’s not really a gyro slider per se, but he’s able to almost use it as one. It’s a pitch that works well down and in to righties, as he often paints it on the corner.
By the same extension, he can work it pretty much anywhere down in the zone to lefties. Due to where it leaves his hand, it always seems to be thrown behind lefties, which visibly makes these hitters uncomfortable. Again, he sometimes struggles to throw it for strikes, but it’s served as a good offering.
Hill often goes to his curveball deep in counts, which can be used to chase whiffs at a high rate. Instead of the pitch appearing to have a 12-6 shape, it moves more 11-5, making it appear loopier than his slider. It makes both lefties and righties appear uneasy, freezing batters and generating whiffs along the way. When hitters lay off of it, he can get a little wild with the pitch.
Hill rounds out his arsenal with a changeup, which is able to kill spin often and gets right-handers far out in front regularly. Despite its positive results against right-handers, he needs to do a little bit better at sequencing to truly maximize its efficiency. Just like the rest of his arsenal, he’ll need to land it in the strike zone more, too.
There’s no question about the stuff and the athleticism Hill possesses; it all comes back to his location. Especially if he’s able to continue growing into his frame a little bit more, he could be a dangerous arm for years to come.
Comparing Hill to Other Blue Jays Arms
Currently, the Blue Jays possess a very interesting pitching core in their minor league system.
With a group headlined by the electric trio of Nolan Perry, Johnny King, and Cole Carlon, the Blue Jays are stacking up arms unlike anything in recent franchise memory. Also, Ricky Tiedemann, a former blue-chip prospect who has fallen due to injuries, is battling his way back now as well and cannot be forgotten in this conversation.
When looking at these arms, the first one that stands out to me as a fair comparison for Hill is Johnny King, as both players are in a very similar position. Most notably, King has also had his fair share of control troubles, but has made significant strides in this area over the last year.
For example, King saw his walk rate decrease from 17.9% in Low-A last year to 13.7% this year, as progress has been made. He also possesses very intriguing stuff as a left-hander despite being just 19 years old himself, which lines up very closely with Hill.
The encouraging takeaway here, though, is that the Blue Jays have worked well at refining his control over the last calendar year. While he’s still a little ways away from being a complete project, he’s finding better results this season and getting his walks closer to a manageable place.
If the Blue Jays can do the same with Hill, he may find himself taking a notable step forward as King has done this year, entering prospect stardom sooner rather than later.
Knowing this, it’s easy to be bullish on his development now that he’s working with the Blue Jays’ staff. If they’re able to help him limit the walks, Hill is in a very good position to succeed moving forward and take the next step toward becoming a big leaguer.
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Written by
Jay Staph, a huge baseball fan and stat nerd, founded and ran his own baseball writing website, BSBWrites, at just 16-years-old. With focal points around prospects,…