If anyone is looking for tickets, a buddy of mine picked a set of 4 seasons last year. Helping him manage it, and he's willing to sell most weekday games for slightly below face value.
Greetings from sunny Florida! We attended the Tigers @ Jays spring training game March 22 won by the Jays 5-4 in a thrilling walkoff 3 run HR by Shane Opitz in the bottom of the 9th!
Estrada, Grilli, Smith, Howell, and Biagini pitched and except for the 3 run bomb by Biagini in the top of the 9th all looked good!
Donaldson made his fielding debut and looked pretty healthy after the calf injury.
The Jays desperately need a new spring training park as the stadium is small. We had great seats right behind home plate but it is hot.
We attended our 2nd spring training game at the George M Steinbrenner Park in Tampa for Jays at Yankees.
The Good
The Yankees park is 100x better than the park in Dunedin. Rogers really needs to shell out some cash and build something new!
Most of the Jays regulars played even thou it was a split squad game except for Pearce and Martin who stayed back to play the junior nationals in Dunedin.
Travis DHed and went 2 for 4 with both hits being solid line drives to the wall.
Goins had a 2 run HR and Salty had a solo shot.
Bautista looked healthy and played 6 innings and ran down a couple of balls hit to the gap.
Donaldson didn't hit but did play 6 innings and looked good in the field.
Tepara (1 IP) Bolsinger (3 IP) and Loup (1 IP) looked good in relief.
The Bad
Jays lost 6-5 on a 9th inning walk-off when Biagini blew a 5-4 lead! If you see my March 22 report he also gave up 3 runs to blow the lead in that game in the 9th! Not sure what the Jays will do with Biagini. I would prefer he goes to AAA to start.
The Jays defense made 3 errors. Morales was playing 1st and misplayed 2 balls hit to him. This is worrisome if the Jays expect him to play 1st regularly. The other one was costly in the 9th.
Hopefully the Jays release Matt Latos. He started and looked pretty bad.
Here is a couple of pics from today's game. Note the one of me beside the Lou Gehrig plaque is in memory of my Dad. Cheers, Steve
Morales should be full time DH. From what I've read, they're just trying to see if it's viable to play him at first (which it's not, his defensive metric is horrid) so they can use someone else as DH, but it'll be Pearce in LF now probably assuming his arm is ok, Smoak at 1 and Morales DH to start the year. Otherwise you will probably see Pearce at 1, Upton in LF and Morales at DH at the season opener.
Morales should be full time DH. From what I've read, they're just trying to see if it's viable to play him at first (which it's not, his defensive metric is horrid) so they can use someone else as DH, but it'll be Pearce in LF now probably assuming his arm is ok, Smoak at 1 and Morales DH to start the year. Otherwise you will probably see Pearce at 1, Upton in LF and Morales at DH at the season opener.
That is what I am hoping for at this point. Unless they are still willing to give Dalton Pompey another shot to start the year.
I was at today's game. I may have been day dreaming of the leafs going 2-0 at home these next 2 games. All the while the jays were down 11-1 up until near the end. Pretty quite inside the dome today.
You are the math guy. Based on Sanchez going on the DL today, Happ going for an MIR, JD on the DL, and this is the kind of injury that will plaque him all year long.
Bullpen problems, statistically, what percentage win rate do we need to get to 90 wins. Maybe 88 gets you in a playoff for a wild card game. No hope on the horzion.
You can't win the World Series in April, but you sure can fall out of the race in April.
Jays were 12-24 on May 14, 1989 when they lost to the Twins 13-1 and Jimy Williams was fired.
Cito Gaston took over the team and they won the division, back in the day when there was no wild card to fall back on. The winning pitcher on May 15, 1989 was Jimmy Key and ironically the losing pitcher that day was John fucking Farrell.
Kelly Gruber only played 135 games that year, Jays had Dave Stieb at 17-8 and no other Jays starter was over .500. They had two pitchers make 3 starts each and pitch to an era of 10+.
Before you say, oh well they must have had a crazy winning streak to win the division - they had one winning streak of 6 games and that was the longest all year. They didn't even get to .500 until Jul. 28
The Jays are 6.5 games out of first and 5 games back in the wild card.
To say the season is over with 150 games remaining is stupid.
Jays were 12-24 on May 14, 1989 when they lost to the Twins 13-1 and Jimy Williams was fired.
Cito Gaston took over the team and they won the division, back in the day when there was no wild card to fall back on. The winning pitcher on May 15, 1989 was Jimmy Key and ironically the losing pitcher that day was John fucking Farrell.
Kelly Gruber only played 135 games that year, Jays had Dave Stieb at 17-8 and no other Jays starter was over .500. They had two pitchers make 3 starts each and pitch to an era of 10+.
Before you say, oh well they must have had a crazy winning streak to win the division - they had one winning streak of 6 games and that was the longest all year. They didn't even get to .500 until Jul. 28
The Jays are 6.5 games out of first and 5 games back in the wild card.
To say the season is over with 150 games remaining is stupid.
There is the math for you.
Its not just math.
DL
JD
Aaron Sanchez
JA Happ about to go
- No depth in starting pitching
- Bullpen looks week
- Minus Pillar, who excites you in the outfield.
- Lack of depth in the organization
- Lack of life on the bench
I admit winning cure some of this, but it will be two years before we see any real prospects coming down the pipe line.. We are just an old, old team.
[x] 5 game win streak
[x] hottest team in AL
[x] AL hits leader
[x] 19 inning bullpen scoreless streak
[x] most strikeouts by bullpen in AL in May
[ ] Season over
Comments
Ricky Romero officially off the books in 2017
Section 129 row 21 on the aisle.
Estrada, Grilli, Smith, Howell, and Biagini pitched and except for the 3 run bomb by Biagini in the top of the 9th all looked good!
Donaldson made his fielding debut and looked pretty healthy after the calf injury.
The Jays desperately need a new spring training park as the stadium is small. We had great seats right behind home plate but it is hot.
Cheers, Steve
Sent from my XT1064 using Tapatalk
You must mean the physical diamond size and I'm not sure of that. Certainly they are one of the smallest in terms of seating capacity, parking, etc..
lol, just realized you changed your post while I was quoting it... Sneaky..
Marco Estrada opening day
J. A. Happ
Marcus Stroman
Francisco Liriano
Aaron Sanchez
Should be 65 wins barring any injuries.
Prophet22
This win total is for the starting staff. My guess for the season is 84.5
I'd STILL take the over for the starters, as I think the Jays could quite easily have 2 x 20 game winners on that staff.
Ok. I am willing to bet the Jays starters won't win more than 65 games this year. I will not go more than 100.00. Brent
How many did the rotation win last year, btw?
That would be amazing. A quick google search reveals that hasn't happened since 2002 (twice that year).
https://www.quora.com/Baseball-Statistics-When-was-the-last-time-there-were-two-20-win-pitchers-on-the-same-team
I will take the 10.00 bet!
I have 90.00 available. You decide how much.
The Good
The Yankees park is 100x better than the park in Dunedin. Rogers really needs to shell out some cash and build something new!
Most of the Jays regulars played even thou it was a split squad game except for Pearce and Martin who stayed back to play the junior nationals in Dunedin.
Travis DHed and went 2 for 4 with both hits being solid line drives to the wall.
Goins had a 2 run HR and Salty had a solo shot.
Bautista looked healthy and played 6 innings and ran down a couple of balls hit to the gap.
Donaldson didn't hit but did play 6 innings and looked good in the field.
Tepara (1 IP) Bolsinger (3 IP) and Loup (1 IP) looked good in relief.
The Bad
Jays lost 6-5 on a 9th inning walk-off when Biagini blew a 5-4 lead! If you see my March 22 report he also gave up 3 runs to blow the lead in that game in the 9th! Not sure what the Jays will do with Biagini. I would prefer he goes to AAA to start.
The Jays defense made 3 errors. Morales was playing 1st and misplayed 2 balls hit to him. This is worrisome if the Jays expect him to play 1st regularly. The other one was costly in the 9th.
Hopefully the Jays release Matt Latos. He started and looked pretty bad.
Here is a couple of pics from today's game. Note the one of me beside the Lou Gehrig plaque is in memory of my Dad. Cheers, Steve
That is what I am hoping for at this point. Unless they are still willing to give Dalton Pompey another shot to start the year.
Prophet22
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
You are the math guy. Based on Sanchez going on the DL today, Happ going for an MIR, JD on the DL, and this is the kind of injury that will plaque him all year long.
Bullpen problems, statistically, what percentage win rate do we need to get to 90 wins. Maybe 88 gets you in a playoff for a wild card game. No hope on the horzion.
You can't win the World Series in April, but you sure can fall out of the race in April.
As Prophet posted, you sure can fall out of the race early, real difficult to get back in now.... Not impossible but really, really hard.
Although nothing a 12-15 game winning streak wouldn't solve..
Cito Gaston took over the team and they won the division, back in the day when there was no wild card to fall back on. The winning pitcher on May 15, 1989 was Jimmy Key and ironically the losing pitcher that day was John fucking Farrell.
Kelly Gruber only played 135 games that year, Jays had Dave Stieb at 17-8 and no other Jays starter was over .500. They had two pitchers make 3 starts each and pitch to an era of 10+.
Before you say, oh well they must have had a crazy winning streak to win the division - they had one winning streak of 6 games and that was the longest all year. They didn't even get to .500 until Jul. 28
The Jays are 6.5 games out of first and 5 games back in the wild card.
To say the season is over with 150 games remaining is stupid.
There is the math for you.
Its not just math.
DL
JD
Aaron Sanchez
JA Happ about to go
- No depth in starting pitching
- Bullpen looks week
- Minus Pillar, who excites you in the outfield.
- Lack of depth in the organization
- Lack of life on the bench
I admit winning cure some of this, but it will be two years before we see any real prospects coming down the pipe line.. We are just an old, old team.
[x] hottest team in AL
[x] AL hits leader
[x] 19 inning bullpen scoreless streak
[x] most strikeouts by bullpen in AL in May
[ ] Season over