Pregame Items
Internet is going wonky on us here, so I’m going to be brief while I have a connection here. Just a few bits from today’s pregame. Obviously, the biggest news of the day is that B.J. Ryan has decided to skip the World Baseball Classic.
Ryan is saying that he’s out of whack mechanically and he wants to stay in camp with pitching coach Brad Arnsberg and crew to sort through the issues. He doesn’t want to be working on his delivery while pitching for his country.
Everyone is saying this is entirely Ryan’s call, but it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if the Jays leaned on him a bit to get him to stick around with the team. For what it’s worth, though, no one is saying that’s the case.
The Jays had a “B” game today at noon and David Purcey logged two innings for the Jays. He allowed one hit, gave up two runs (one earned), and finished with four strikeouts and two walks. Purcey is in line to be the No. 3 starter.
Mike Maroth — still fighting that left knee injury — is on deck to start for the Jays tomorrow against Team Canada. For a nice little twist, Scott Richmond is down to start for Canada against the Jays.
Today’s Blue Jays lineup:
Joe Inglett, RF
Aaron Hill, 2B
Adam Lind, LF
Kevin Millar, 1B
Jason Lane, CF
Brad Emaus, 3B
Brian Dopriak, DH
John McDonald, SS
Raul Chavez, C
Ricky Romero and Brett Cecil are down to pitch three innings each
POSTGAME UPDATE: Tough outing for Mr. Romero today. Six walks to the 10 batters he faced and he only lasted 1 1/3 innings. He didn’t give up a hit, but he wasn’t coming close to the strike zone either. Overall, Romero threw 56 pitches and just 27 for strikes. … Cecil came in for Romero with one out in the second and looked sharp, with his typically strong slider. He turned in 2 2/3 innings, allowing no runs with three strikeouts, one walk and one hit. … Ryan Howard CRUSHED a pitch from Jeremy Accardo to DEEP center field. I emphasize these words because the ball bounced off the light tower in straightaway center. Just absolutely killed. … Accardo was roughed up in his second inning of work. Overall, he allowed seven runs on seven hits in two innings. Ugly. … Jays lost the “B” game, 2-1. … Some “B” game lines for you: Jason Frasor, 1 IP, BB; Brian Tallet, 1 IP, 1 H, 3 K; Brandon League, 1 IP, 1 H, 1 BB, 1 WP, 2 K. … I hate to rag on Russ Adams, because he’s one of the good guys in the organization. But that unearned run Purcey allowed today? Came from a tailormade double play grounder that Adams apparently botched with a throwing error (info courtesy of Mike Wilner, who made the trek to watch the game). … Lind, Millar and Emaus all homered today. Lind’s was a crush job to right-center. … That’s it for me today. Remember, you can follow live in-game updates from me all spring on twitter. Find me under @MLBastian.
~JB
Major League Bastian 
Not the way for Romero to win friends and influence people. 6 walks in 1.1 innings. He’s lucky Cecil saved his butt in the 2nd inning.
Of course, the HR hit by Lind in the first putting us up by 2-1 didn’t hurt either.
Interesting that Cito is testing Brad Emaus at 3rd base. This kid could become a replacement for Rolen if he continues the rapid growth he had last year and can handle 3rd base. By all accounts, he has the arm and glove to do just that.
In some prospect lists, he’s overtaken Scott Campbell as our top 2nd base prospect, likely because he showed possibilities of future power in Dunedin last year.
He also had a huge winter season in Hawaii hitting .333BA/.447OBP/.994OPS. He was an all star in the FSL as well as Hawaii this year.
One to watch this year for sure. I expect he’ll start in either AA or if he shows really well this spring possibly AAA. You can review his stats at:
http://www.minorleaguebaseball.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?n=Bradley%20Emaus&pos=&sid=milb&t=p_pbp&pid=458587
Romero officially stinks. Cecil is officially a stud… If he keeps this up it will be extremely tough for Cito and JP to send this kid back to the minors.
gsjays, nice post Emaus has really came out of nowhere, it would be nice to have some insurance at 3B. (farm is bare besides Ahrens). Might not have the power to be your prototypical 3B but it still could come.
As for Romero he is definatly dissapointing. This guy has been the definiton of inconsistancy. But they can’t give up on him yet he has the ability to strike guys out and be a legitmate 3rd or 4th starter(on a good team) if he can ever get his head on straight.
Yeah, Romero hasn’t exactly panned out, has he?
http://prospects.mlblogs.com/
I might be sorry I say this, but I think the very best thing we could do for Romero is send him to a sports shrink to get his head straightened out and confidence up. What kills him are the walks. No one really hits him that hard-he just can not get it over the plate consistently.
It appeared he had the problem straightened away in his last 8-9 starts in AAA last year, but clearly that isn’t the case.
The rumor was The Jays had made a minor change to his delivery which caused the improvement. If that is the case he needs a sports shrink to convince him he has the right stuff, just trust it and go with it. But I think he does that at AAA not here.
Denoit-Yes, Emaus, didn’t really do well at Auburn in 2007, nor starting off at Dunedin last year. Then all of a sudden in late May it’s like a light went on and he’s been hammering it ever since.
Let’s hope it continues, cause right now he’s looking good. Definately one to watch this year.
I think this is either a boom or bust year for Ahrens. He hasn’t shown he can hit for either average or power yet. He has Balbino Fuenmayor coming behind him who had a really good year last year and Emaus in front of him if we convert Emaus to 3rd base. This will be Ahrens 3rd year as a pro and he either really steps it up or gets lost in the backwater.
Ok guys and gals, place your bets on tommorrow’s game against Team Canada.
Scott Richmond is scheduled to start for Team Canada and Mike Maroth for The Jays.
3 of the bats in the lineup for Team Canada will be
Justin Morneau
Jason Bay
Matt Stairs
I’m going to have to disagree with Ahrens. He put up pretty solid numbers in the MWL last year for his age. Its more of a pitching dominated league and he hit .259 with only 5 HRs. But because he is only 19 that power has alot of time to grow.(oldsmobile park in lansing has bigger dimensions in the power alleys and to center than the rogers center) I actually had the chance to catch a Lansing game last year. Thought it would be worth the trip since there were so many good prospects playing there. I like him, and your right it will be a big year for him, but I have faith he is going to be at the very least an average player. Keep an eye out for Tim Collins this year, was really impressed with his stuff when i watched. He was hitting 95 on the radar gun (told it was fast but still compared to the rest of the guys i saw that day he was 4-5MPH faster) and his curvball looked really sharp from where i was sitting.
Denoit
The problem is 3rd base is a power position. Ahren didn’t play all his games in Lansing, his slugging number was only .367, his OBP was only .329 to go with his BA of .259. True it’s not a big hr league, but Ahren was about 50th in homers hit in the league and had 7 guys on his own team ahead of him.
My other major concern on him is he made 27 errors in 104 games at 3rd base. True, he’s only 19, BUT he’s also a kid we drafted 1st and gave a $1.44 million dollar signing bonus to, so I expect more performance.
I just think with Balbino coming and Emaus busting out, Ahren had better “bust out” this year or he’s going to get deep in the deph chart and probably will end up as trade bait down the road.
Lansing lead the league with a team era of 3.05 as you probably know, so they had a lot of good pitchers, a total of 10 with era’s under 2.0. Most of these kids came from the 2007 draft, and if you’ve been here for a while, I have written a lot about the pitchers we drafted that year.
Collins is a very good LH strike out reliever. In 68 innings he struck out 98. Gave up just one earned run while fanning 55 in his first 38 2/3 innings (21 games) for a 0.23 ERA on July 2. …
I didn’t realize his fastball was that good, so thank you for that. What I couldn’t understand about him, is why he wasn’t moved up like Mills and some others in July with the results he got.
There’s a few pitchers to watch from this team, two of which I hope return to 2007 form, James Dougher and Brian Letko who led the GCL in 2007 era with microscopic era’s, but struggled in 2008. I think they were both coming off of injuries and hope they come back.
Denoit-another interesting story on Collins for you from The Southpaw.
Collins is only five foot seven inches tall. He’s a left-hander with a funky delivery who – for obvious reasons – was undrafted. So how did an undrafted high schooler come to be such a hot item for the Jays?
Well, thereby hangs a tale (which if you are a Jays fan you’ve probably already heard but what the hell, I’m going to tell it anyway): Collins just so happens to be from Worcester, Massachusetts. The home town of a certain general manager. And this GM’s dad just happens to have been watching Tim Collins pitch in HS and American Legion games for a few years now and he told his son “You gotta see this kid” so the GM takes in a game in which young Collins strikes out 12 hitters in four innings – that’s called an attention getter.
After scheduling a workout where Collins came through for JP and a Jays scout, he was offered a contract. Now he’s one of the best stories to come out of the Midwest League. The little lefty with the big curve held opposing hitters to a .158 batting average, he struck out 98 in 68 innings, and he finished with a 1.58 ERA. Some around the MWL call him a LH Tim Lincecum (5’10” 155) – his pitching coach, Tom Signore, says his delivery looks like Sandy Koufax. He qualifies:
“Obviously he’s not Sandy Koufax, but the delivery is very reminiscent of his delivery. Timmy’s able to generate every bit of energy within him. And it goes from his feet, through his body to his arm.”
James Dougher and Brian Letko who are the same age as Jesse Litsch, were pitching in the lowest possible level while Litsch was in the Majors. Probably a good reason they had a low era. These guys are both minor leauge roster fillers, not prospects. Dont mean to argue with everything but you have to take age into consideration and what league a player is in when you look at numbers.
Their low era was in their first year as pro’s (2007), so age had nothing to do with it. This year will tell whether they both recapture the level of perfomance they had, I hope they do. I expect both with start at Dunedin, and if they perform well be promoted to AA.
So, its to early to tell whether they’re fillers or not, this year will tell, like it will with a lot of the 2007 draftees..
age has everything to do with it They were drafted as seniors out of college playing against 17 and 18 year olds out of high school and international signee’s. If the organization was high on these guys they would have started in A or A+ not rookie ball. 4 years of division 1 baseball can give you a leg up on a high school player
Just an FYI, Brian went to Embry-Riddle in Daytona Beach which I think is Division II and Jimmy went to SUNY Cortland which is Division III in the Northeast. Wouldn’t you rather have seasoned players with experience against top pitchers and top hitters than young men right out of high school? Maturity can have alot to do with how well a player does in handling different scenarios they might have to face at no matter what level they are playing in.
Denoit
They were drafted in 2007 and sent to one of our short season teams as most draftees are. This isn’t unusual since the draft takes place in June and none of these kids can report until the end of June or July, at which time all A and A+ teams were half way through the season.
It is particulary true with pitchers since they’ve generally already pitched a number of innings in the year.
There was a rumor Dougher was going to be promoted late in the year to Lansing or Dunedin, but that didn’t materialize because of injury.
Fact is none of that matters, what matters is how they pitch this year, and as a Blue Jays fan you should be hoping they pitch well and get accelerated to AA, like I am.