Just one more day until Jays pitchers and catchers report, at which point it’s just five days until full squad workouts. Which will mean just four days until fake games, and when that happens it’ll be only 33 more days until real ones! Not that I’m counting.
Spencer Horwitz has had mysterious wrist surgery and will be out six to eight weeks. That implies (*counts off fingers again*) that he’ll miss the beginning of the regular season. It’s to address “chronic symptoms”, so this doesn’t appear to be an ‘MLB player being an oaf in the offseason’ special a la Chris Sale crashing his bike, Yoenis Cespedes crashing his horse, or Glenallen Hill dreaming about spiders. It raises the issue of whether the injury affected the Jays or Guardians’ decisions to trade him, although in bith cases he presumably passed a physical and it didn’t look like the acquiring team got a discount.
A detail I’d missed in Keegan Matheson’s write up of Max Scherzer’s intro press conference, which also contained the info about Yariel Rodriguez entering camp stretched out, is that Jake Bloss will be penciled in as the seventh starter. That’s not much of a surprise, but it confirms that the Jays would really like to get him some seasoning in Buffalo before considering him seriously for a MLB job. His only real competition in the short run is Eric Lauer, back from a so-so performance in the KBO last season. Adams Kloffenstein and Macko could also enter the picture soon, although Klof didn’t exactly light it up in his season and a half in St. Louis’ AAA rotation and was allowed to walk to sign back with the Jays on an MiLB contract, and Macko, while promising, has just one AAA appearance under his belt and work to do to prove he’s got the command and durability to start. So, if a second starter goes down in camp or early in the season, Bloss it is.
Staying on the theme of pitchers, Arden Zwelling has an interesting piece over at SportsNet about Nick Sandlin’s development of a splitter last season. The upshot is that it’s extremely effective against lefties. That’ll be important, because Brendon Little is the only lefty in the bullpen right now and that looks unlikely to change with Brandon Eisert claimed by the White Sox. The Jays will have to rely on Sandlin and fellow split merchant Erik Swanson, who has effectively neutral splits in his career, to manage lefty hitters. It’s going to come up, as Boston, New York and Baltimore were the first, fifth and seventh most left handed lineups in baseball last year.
And that’s really it. Looking at Fangraphs’ offseason tracker, there’s very little business left to do. Alex Bregman and the Astros will eventually accept their loveless marriage of convenience, and a few teams will nab depth starters as elbows pop in camp, but that’s really it. Time for baseball to gradually start happening.
And, as always, Vladito extenda est.