Today’s Jays’ game is not on TV, one of the few that aren’t on TV. The game is at Lakeland, Florida in the Tigers’ spring park, Publix Field at Joker Marchant Stadium which has to be up there on the list of longest ballpark names, as well as getting two sponsor names into it. It isn’t on MLB TV either. If you are really interested Sportsnet will carry a radio broadcast on their site (two minutes of thinking of subtle insults for anyone who would listen to a spring game on radio and I settle on interested. I have no imagination this morning). It has a 1:00 Eastern start time.
The Jay are sending a bunch of regulars to Lakeland. Google maps tells me that it is an hour and a quarter drive from Dunedin to Lakeland, which likely means it will be a 2 to 3 hour drive on the way back.
It is too bad that we aren’t going get to watch it, I want every chance I can to see Kazuma Okamoto play third. I also like any chance to watch Jonatan Clase play center field.
We are going to get to see a lot of the prospects and the guys on the edge of making the Jays roster, later in spring training, because there are seven Jays going to the World Baseball Classic, as well as five minor leaguers. The Jays players will be spread across 11 WBC teams.
- Andres Gimenez (Venezuela)
- Leo Jimenez (Panama)
- Ernie Clement (United States)
- Alejandro Kirk (Mexico)
- Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (Dominican Republic)
- Kazuma Okamoto (Japan)
- Yariel Rodriguez (Cuba)
Minor leaguers (well, Yariel is a minor leaguer too:
- Adam Macko (Canada)
- RJ Schreck (Isreal)
- C.J. Stubbs (Israel)
- Will Cresswell (Great Britain)
- Ismael Munguia (Nicaragua)
The WBC starts on March 5th and runs til the 17th.
The Jays are bringing Trey Yesavage along slowly this spring. He won’t pitch in a spring game until next week. Trey threw a lot more innings last year than he had before and, not surprisingly, they want to be careful with him. Or at least as careful as you can be, while asking someone to throw a rock as hard as he possibly can, while making it spin as much has he possibly can.
I do often wonder how so many of them can make it through a season without injury.
As well, Ricky Tiedemann ‘experienced’ elbow soreness last year and will take a week off from throwing. MRI didn’t show any damage. A pitcher coming back from Tommy John will have some soreness, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. But it does show why there the team tries to grab up as many potential MLB pitchers as possible.
We weren’t expecting Tiedemann to break camp with the team or anything like that, even if there were to be a rash of injuries to our starting pitchers. I won’t worry unless they shut him down during the season.
Before spring training, I would have said said that Eloy Jiménez had almost no chance of making the Jays out of spring training. But, he’s looked terrific (in two games), he’s a right-handed bat and our outfield is fairly lefty heavy.
If he could play center, I’d say he had a good chance, because I’d rather have his bat than Myles Straw’s. But since he can’t, he’d have to beat out Davis Schneider and that would be tough. Schneider does have options left.
But would you rather have Eloy than Nathan Lukes? Lukes has an option year left. And we have Jesus Sanchez in front of him on the left-handed hitting corner outfielder depth chart. But then, Lukes can play center.
Jiménez can also play first base and will get some time there while Vlad is at the WBC.
Anyway, I’d have guessed Jiménez had about a 1% chance of making the team, before the start of spring, he must have a 30% chance now. Of course, he would have to make it through spring training without an injury and injuries have been his downfall.
After being shown Bo Bichette video of him booting some balls, early in spring training, I liked seeing this great play:
