5 Thoughts on the Toronto Blue Jays - Pitchers and Catchers Report.......finally

Blue Jays pitchers and Catchers took part in their 1st official workout today and after a a long couple months Baseballs back.....and holy shit the Blue Jays had quite an interesting 1st day back at the ballpark....or complex in Dunedin.

1.  So....It's the 1st day or work outs and I can't start off by saying anything other than that it's great for Baseball to be back....After 4 months of off season signings, trades, front office hiring, press conferences, online lynch mobs, and an never ending discussion around a former GM..... it's  nice to have have a semblance of the actual game started again!

2.  So yeah....The Big Rumor out of the night is that the Blue Jays are on the verge of trading for Jay Bruce.  Rumblings seem to suggest that the teams are waiting on the Physicals to be completed with all the players involved in order to announce anything...So I guess this makes the Jays a little more scary as a Home Run threat...Listen I don't think this trade is horrible if the Jays get some money back and they don't send out any prospects, but to be honest for this 2016 team I'm not sure Jay Bruce is the type of player that they need to win.  Sure they are still going to score a bunch of runs, but I've always thought that they need some type of professional hitter in the line-up and Jay Bruce doesn't fit that mold.  It's not like Saunders is that either and let's face it he's not exactly the model of health, but I don't see how this trade makes the Jays any better than they would be with Saunders playing LF.  Who knows...This could all killed if Saunders medicals come back wonky....which it probably will

3. The other big news maker from the day was from Joey Bays himself who in not so many words said that he's going to be getting paid in 2017 in some way or another.  If you haven't seen what Jose said check it out and do yourself a favor and look into what he said about Rogers and their position in all of this.  It's pretty interesting and really shows that Jose has done his homework and has a great understanding of how the unique ownership situation of the Blue Jays works.   I'm thinking that Jose has asked for somewhere in the 150M over 6 years range.  To be honest I think he would sign for 125M over 5 years, but something tells me that he is really interested in hitting the Free Agent market and if the Blue Jays want to keep him from doing that then they are going to have to provide a considerable benefit to him in order to do so.....

4. So let's play the who'e the 5th starter for the Blue Jays game....  Who you got?  Me i'm saying that it's Aaron Sanchez's to loose.   I wouldn't say it's an open and shut case, but with the acquisition of Drew Storen it became a hell of a lot clearer to me that the Jays would rather have Sanchez make that transition back to Starter with the opportunity to finally reach his maximum potential....+ he put on 20lbs of muscle.....cause I guess that means something.

5.  I think one of my favorite things this spring training is going to be the complete over the top Blue Jays coverage that we are going to get from the Canadian Sports Media Companies....I've entered into a slow decent into not enjoying watching the current NHL/Hockey as I find it the most over analyzed, boring, complacent sport out there and given that thirst for Baseball is so great right now i'm just excited that Baseball talk is going to take over for at least some of the mundane hockey talk that exists in the Toronto Sport market currently.

5 Thoughts on the Toronto Blue Jays - The Leadoff and other stuff!

So this evening Blue Jays season ticket holders were treated the a new take on the annual Season Ticket holder event in the new form of  "The Leadoff"  and even though I was not in attendance by the magic if technology I was able to watch the whole thing go down on the Magical device known as "The Internet".

Overall seemed like a lot of fun and it seemed like the duo of Mark Shapiro and Ross Atkins won over some fans!  The whole production of the event looked great, but it's hard not to like an event that had one Mr. Dan Shulman taking part as a Co-MC.  Love me some Dan Shulman.....

Some of the other highlights from my POV (beside Shulman) were Kevin Pillar, Gibby being Gibby and listening to Buck try to ad-lib fan questions and totally butchering them beyond belief.

Lots of stuff in the last little while to talk about!  5 Thoughts and here they are....

1.  So I think its fair to say that one of the reason that most Blue Jays fans figured that Mark Shapiro wanted to come to Toronto was that he was going to have a much larger pool of money at his disposal to build his team. Well I do think that is the case but I think it's safe to say that over the past 2 months with all the new hires and changes that we are seeing to the Blue Jays organization that it's more than simply an increase in player payroll that attracted him to our team.

It's well known that the Indians were a club that was always hampered by payroll restrictions and had to find creative ways to be competitive, which more than likely means you have to make some concessions when it comes to spending the money that you do have.  What I really think Shapiro saw in Toronto was the opportunity to not have to make those concessions anymore and finally build an organization how he thinks it should be!  For one reason or another that was the underlying feeling that I got from the whole "Leadoff" event..

2.  Just prior to "The Leadoff" an interview came out where Jose Bautista said that "It would be an honor to finish his career as a Blue Jay"!  That's awesome.  I love it.  I want Jose Bautista to be a Blue Jay forever...just like everyone else.  That being said if anyone out there thinks this is anything but a PR play please don't be fooled. This kind of statement (While i'm not saying that it ins't genuine) is the norm now for Jays players to make (Melky, Price, Lowe etc).  When a player does this it puts all the blame/pressure back on the Team if something doesn't get done and the player is still in the hearts of all the fans! PR play...that's it so please don't go overboard with the whole "He said he wants to be here " talk..

3.  So much good news lately.....The Blue Jays are going to put in an all dirt infield for the start of the 2016 season!  Sounds like it's going to be a lot of work to get this done before the home opener on April 8th vs the Red Sox, but let's face it these changes were a long time coming and it's only a good thing for the players....SO LONG ARGOS!

4.  The Winter Tour visited the Upper Canada Mall few weeks ago and the #REALMVP of our family went all Mom of the year and was the 1st in line for the autograph signing. Like no joke 1st in line.....  Props again to my wife for spending her entire day in line to make sure her kids got to meet Sanchez, Stroman, Pompey, Goins and Pillar!

5. Looks like the Blue Jays are signing Gavin Floyd!  Yeah the same guy that the Blue Jays were linked to a bunch of years ago when he was kinda good...no word yet really if it's a minor league deal or what, but I'm sure it's not for much money and who knows it could turn out pretty good.. Dude looks like he had some decent numbers the past few years outside of being hurt all the time...