Monday, March 21, 2011

Twitter Has Made Me Lazy...

In honor of Twitter's 5th birthday, they deserved a spot in my headline. It's true though. It's so easy to spew forth my Jays/baseball-related thoughts into the twitterverse, and not have to provide any evidence, logic or backup thought. A full bog post now seems like a lot of heavy lifting. More than anything, I'm sure taht's what's made it successful.

But I am going to try to commit myself to keeping the blog alive. I will re-learn sentence-structure, and fight the urge to #hashtageverything.

As for our beloved Jays. Things are starting to round into shape. I was disappointed to hear that Mark Rzepczinski was informed that he won't be in the rotation. I think he has a Brandon-Webb-Pre-Injury Sinker, and his slider is a serious out pitch. A month or two on a minor league salary may have cleared up his control problems, but that's not for me to decide. He has instead opted to joint the bullpen battle, which is even more crowded than the rotation battle was.

This leads me to believe that the Jays, and /or their medical staff have some real, serious concern over Frank Francisco and Octavio Dotel's health. Rzepczinski would do well in a high-leverage role, and may be graduated quickly based on injuries. It also offers the team a second lefty out of the 'pen.

Speaking of leftys: Jo-Jo Reyes is generating buzz again. I have a sneaking suspicion that all the recent talk about "options" being used as tie-breakers for roster decisions means that Reyes may break camp as the 5th man in the rotation. (Drabek becomes the victim of his options) Why you ask? simply to try to build his potential trade value. Reyes could reasonably bring back a prospect (likely not a top one...) from a pitching-starved contender (STL, MLW, NYY, LAA, etc) or, he becomes this year's feel-good turnaround story, and he adds to the team's already overstocked pitching staff.

Over on the offensive side of things: I am worried about Aaron Hill. I wonder if it's too late to move Lawrie back to 2nd, and let him break camp until Hill has fully recovered.

Everyone else appears to be rounding nicely into form. The Podsednick injury pretty much sets the roster with Patterson, McCoy, Molina and Johnny Mac on the bench. Encarnacion has been swinging a hot bat, and I hope to see him carry that into April. Adam Lind is hitting the ball to all fields again, and there haven't been any negative reports at this point regarding his defense. Travis Snider has looked great with his Moustache and Mullett combo. This team looks solid. Dark Horse. I seriously regret not making the 50/1 prop bet on them to make the world series when I was in Vegas recently.

That's all for now. I have some other ideas brewing, but those merit their own post. Till then...

1 comment:

  1. I wouldn't worry too much about it - it's hard to get extremely excited about Spring Training results because you can never tell if it will translate over to big league success. Once Opening Day hits, then we'll be in full on "baseball mode"!

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