Bantering and Game #20 GameThread

No baseball for a couple more hours, so let’s banter:

• Alek Manoah threw off a mound for the first time today. Sounds like it went well:

The plan has been for Manoah to be facing batters at the complex by June, and to take a rehab assignment in July for a potential August return to the big league team. Indications are that he’s on track if not slightly ahead. Still a long ways to go, and we’ll have to cross our fingers he wakes up tomorrow feeling good, but it’s progress.

• Max Scherzer also threw a bullpen, which apparently looked good. We’ll have to wait and see how he feels afterwards, but again signs seem positive for his return from the thumb soreness that scratched him from yesterday’s start.
• More cautiously good pitching injury news: Erik Swanson has a “medial nerve entrapment” in his elbow but no structural damage. He’ll get a cortisone shot and be back to a throwing program in a few days. Hat tip to Taco for catching the tweet, I often forget to check X: The Everything App these days.
• In news from around the league, the Padres are apparently listening to offers for Dylan Cease. They’ve received interest from nine teams, including “all five in the AL East.” Cease is in his last year of arbitration, making $13.75m. He posted a 3.47 ERA last year, and over the past four years is 7th in MLB in innings pitched and 19th in ERA. A deal before opening day doesn’t seem likely. Like the Blue Jays, the Padres project to be in the wildcard hunt, but towards the back, with a 35% chance of making the playoffs per Fangraphs. Close enough that it probably behooves them to hang on for a couple of months and see which direction the season is trending before making a drastic move. For the same reason, it might not make sense for the Jays to make a big win-now move until they know how the AL wildcard race is shaping up (and how Bo Bichette and others are playing). On the other hand, we could definitely use a front of the rotation pitcher (who couldn’t), and the Padres badly need a corner bat and rotation depth with cheap control as some combination of Xander Bogaerts, Yu Darvish, Fernando Tatis jr., Joe Musgrove and Manny Machado will tie up over $100m a season for them every year through 2033. Those are both things which the Jays are in a position to expend, so it’s plausible that a mutually beneficial deal could come together. I’d bet heavily against, of course, but it’s enough to keep an eye on.
• Calls are growing for Stuart Sternberg’s ownership group to sell the Rays. This includes pressure form local government in Tampa and St. Pete and apparently from inside MLB, as Rob Manfred seems fed up after the group pulled out of their deal for a new stadium near the Trop’s current location. You expect greed, bullying and incompetence from MLB ownership, but the A’s and Rays have really raised the bar the past few seasons in the way they’ve torched their relationships with their communities and with the league while either agreeing to and then backing out of an apparently unsustainable deal (the Rays) or storming off in a huff to play on turf the temperature of the surface of the sun in a minor league park while they wait years for an increasingly shaky looking new home to be built (the A’s). Fortunately, billionaire fools wrecking public institutions in inept attempts to wring just a little more out of the already sweet deals they receive has no larger resonance in the world today. Anyway…

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Today’s game doesn’t start until 6:05pm. Yariel Rodriguez will try to correct course on what’s been a pretty rough early spring. The Astros will turn to Hayden Wesneski, who’s off to an excellent start in his first season in Houston after being acquired in the Kyle Tucker trade.

Blue Jays Lineup:

1. Will Wagner, 1B
2. Davis Schneider, DH
3. Anthony Santander, RF
4. Andres Gimenez, 2B
5. Ernie Clement, 3B
6. Joey Loperfido, LF
7. Tyler Heineman, C
8. Nathan Lukes, CF
9. Leo Jimenez, SS

Houston Lineup:

1. Isaac Paredes, 3B
2. Ben Gamel, DH
3. Yainer Diaz, C
4. Zach Dezenzo, 1B
5. Chas McCormick, CF
6. Quincy Hamilton, RF
7. Mauricio, Dubon, SS
8. Luis Guillorme, 2B
9. Colin Barber, LF

Go Jays Go!