Johnny King Is Looking Like the Blue Jays’ Next Big Thing
Johnny King, one of the Blue Jays' top prospects, has been lighting it up in the lower levels of MiLB, and he's been flying under the radar.
The Toronto Blue Jays have one of the league’s top pitching prospects in Trey Yesavage, who has climbed from Single-A Dunedin to Triple-A Buffalo already in 2025 and is up to No. 71 on Just Baseball’s official prospect rankings. As exciting as Yesavage has been, the hype surrounding him has inadvertently caused another Blue Jays pitching prospect to go under the radar: Johnny King.
King is currently pitching for Toronto’s Single-A affiliate, the Dunedin Blue Jays, and continues to put together more and more of a case for a promotion with each start he makes. Ranked by JB as Toronto’s 11th-ranked prospect earlier in 2025, the 19-year-old left-hander is surely a player to keep an eye on as he will soon make his way up through the ranks of Minor League Baseball.
Royally Dominant On the Mound
Spending parts of the 2025 season in the Florida Complex and Florida State Leagues, King has posted incredible stats at each stop. With the FCL Blue Jays, he notched 24 innings with 41 strikeouts to just 7 walks and an ERA of 1.13 and allowing an opposing batting average of just .195.
On June 28th of this year, King was promoted to Single-A Dunedin and has achieved nothing short of the same success he had in rookie ball. He’s made 8 appearances and 7 starts at the Single-A level in 2025 and has pitched to the tune of a 1.93 ERA across 28 innings of work. Among pitchers with at least 5 innings pitched in the Florida State League (FSL) in 2025, King’s ridiculous 15.75 K/9 stands atop the leaderboard by far, besting even Yesavage in his 33.1-inning stint with the team earlier this year (14.85 K/9).
In his 28 innings with Single-A Dunedin, King has 49 strikeouts while walking 19, sporting an above-average walk rate to go along with his insane level of swing-and-miss potential. What’s even more is that he’s doing this at just 19 years of age and in his age-18 season while most of his contemporaries in the FSL are at least 20 years old. His MLB ETA is listed as 2028, but if he continues to dominate the minor leagues as he has so far then this certainly could come sooner.
King has allowed 3 or fewer hits in 12 of his 15 outings across the two lowest levels of MiLB this season and has struck out at least 5 batters in 11 of them. He’s easily been Toronto’s most exciting non-Yesavage pitching prospect this season, and he’s been using his above-average fastball and slider to dominate hitters at an elite level.
He’s also surrendered a surprisingly-high .348 BABIP at the Single-A level and he gave up a .370 BABIP in rookie ball. This could indicate that despite not giving up many hits (6.06 cumulative 2025 H/9) opposing batters are getting lucky on balls they put in play.
In his most recent outing against the New York Yankees’ Single-A affiliate, King threw 5 innings of shutout ball in which he allowed only 3 hits, gave up zero walks, and struck out 5. He only faced 16 batters over these 5 innings, almost facing the minimum in this outing.
First Promotion of Many?
King has been performing so well at the Single-A level that he could very well earn yet another promotion in the near future, but because of his young age the Blue Jays determine that he needs more time to gain more professional experience. He has only tallied 52 professional innings since being drafted 95th overall by Toronto in the 2024 MLB Draft, so this would make plenty of sense.
While it’s plain to see that King has figured out how to strike batters out at an elite rate, he still has a control problem that’s being reflected in his 6.11 BB/9 rate in Single-A. He’s giving up a lot more flyballs in Single-A than in rookie ball and hitters are making contact more often as he faces more difficult opposition, but as he gets more experience against this level of competition he will continue to find success.
King has been the only pitcher in the FSL this season to appear in a game under the age of 19 (turned 19 on July 26) and he’s been one of the best arms in the league in spite of this. He’s stranded 89% of baserunners at the Single-A level this year and is spearheading Dunedin’s pitching staff without even turning 20 yet.
He might not be one of the most well-known names out there, but over the next few years he’ll be be a part of top prospect rankings galore – remember the name Johnny King.
Closing Thoughts
King is one of the most electric young arms in the lower levels of MiLB and he should be given more respect for the success he’s had this far. While most of the publicity on Blue Jays prospects is given, and understandably so, to Trey Yesavage, Arjun Nimmala, and JoJo Parker, Johnny King should be on more people’s radars.
The left-hander can strike batters out with incredible efficacy and it’s anyone’s guess how long it’ll be before he earns his way to the next level of the minor leagues. This is, in no way, an endorsement of rushing a young arm through the minors because he is good at striking guys out, but rather a discussion of how an incredibly talented teenager is taking the lower levels of MiLB by storm and how he might project in the future.
Keep names like Trey Yesavage on your “to watch” list for the near future, but while Yesavage makes his ascent to the majors over the next year King will be torturing hitters in the minors and trying to follow in his footsteps. All signs point to King being a force to reckon with, and he’s someone to keep a close eye on.
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Ethan has been writing for Just Baseball since 2024 and is fascinated by how sabermetric statistics can assist our understanding of outcomes and probability in baseball.…