• Blue Jays set to start spring training
• The legacy of Mike Ilitch
• James Johnson lighting it up with Heat
TORONTO — Right on time. Just as the Maple Leafs and Raptors show signs of a few wobbles, here comes the franchise with probably the most to lose this season.
Yes, the Toronto Blue Jays — no more younger, no more athletic and only a wee more left-handed than they were at the end of the regular season — will open spring training Tuesday when pitchers and catchers report to Dunedin, Fla.
Here are my five most interesting Blue Jays this spring:
Kendrys Morales
Notwithstanding the shotgun marriage with Jose Bautista, the switch-hitting designated hitter is being counted on as the de facto middle-of-the-order presence and replacement for Edwin Encarnacion. If he doesn’t hit, this team has no shot at the post-season.
Devon Travis
Manager John Gibbons says openly that he has no idea who his leadoff hitter will be if the second baseman can’t stay healthy after off-season arthroscopic surgery on his knee. He asked me in a recent telephone conversation who I’d go with instead of Travis.
"No clue," I said. "Me, neither," Gibbons responded.
Not good.
Joe Biagini
The Blue Jays, who at one point or another could find themselves with three-fifths of their rotation in the World Baseball Classic, have said last year’s Rule 5 revelation will be stretched out in spring training even if he is destined for the bullpen once the regular season rolls around. There is no appreciable triple-A starting pitching depth, but after closer Roberto Osuna and 40-year-old setup man Jason Grilli, Biagini is the most reliable reliever the team has until it sees whether slop-tossing J.P. Howell and side-armer Joe Smith can contribute.
That’s a whole lot of “eighty-pooh miles per hour,” as Gregg Zaun would say. Somebody needs to pick up the workload of Brett Cecil and Joaquin Benoit.
Aaron Sanchez
As Tom Verducci noted in his recent annual look at young pitchers who are at risk because of an increased workload in 2016, Sanchez’s increase of 70 1/3 innings was the largest of any pitcher since 2012. Verducci also has concerns about Sanchez’s delivery, while elsewhere Eno Sarris of FanGraphs wonders if Sanchez’s woes the third time through the order suggests he needs to hone a third pitch.
If you thought concern about Sanchez’s workload ended with the playoffs, think again. If there is a price to be paid, it could be exacted this season, and it will be interesting to see how the Blue Jays strike a balance with Sanchez this spring.
Jarrod Saltalamacchia
Gibbons wanted him on the roster even before A.J. Jimenez was designated for assignment. Truth is Gibbons wanted him last season, as well, thinking he couldn’t do any worse than Josh Thole handling R.A. Dickey and knowing there was a chance that when Salty ran into a pitch it would be a home run, as opposed to a bloop single.
Saltalamacchia’s pitch-framing has become a pronounced weak point but Gibbons hopes his switch-hitting allows for less of a dropoff this season on days in which Russell Martin doesn’t start. An ability to handle first base could open up future spring moves, too.
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MEMORIES OF MIKE ILITCH
Blue Jays president emeritus Paul Beeston told me one time that he always thought of Detroit sports impresario Mike Ilitch as being first and foremost a baseball guy who "got really lucky in hockey," and I thought about that description Friday when news broke that Ilitch had passed away at the age of 87.
Ilitch’s Red Wings delivered four Stanley Cups but his beloved Tigers could never win a title despite making the World Series twice in the space of six years, beaten in five games by the St. Louis Cardinals in a dismal 2006 Series and then swept in four games by the San Francisco Giants in 2012, being shut out twice and hitting a combined .159.
Now, it’s tough to declare any sports owner eligible for sainthood after they’ve used taxpayers’ money to help fund new sports facilities, but Ilitch might come close: he funded 60 per cent of the construction of Comerica Park, and for a guy whose team played in the middle of a city that defines the phrase “urban blight,” he was not afraid to play with the big boys financially. The Blue Jays spent years running and hiding from super-agent Scott Boras, for example, while Ilitch gave out almost half a billion dollars in contracts to his clients.
I sat down with Dave Dombrowski during a workout ahead of the start of the 2012 Series and asked about how delivering a title to Ilitch differed from trying to get one for Charles Bronfman in 1989, knowing Bronfman was going to sell the Montreal Expos.
Dombrowski, then in his second year as Expos general manager at the age of 32, made one of the ballsiest deals I’ve seen: he sent future Hall of Famer Randy Johnson, Brian Holman and an electric-armed reliever named Gene Harris, who was almost as a big a deal as Johnson, to the Seattle Mariners for free-agent-to-be Mark Langston. The Expos floundered down the stretch, and Bronfman put the team up for sale after the next season, the beginning of the day late/dollar short Expos. Dombrowski knew it, eventually joining the expansion Florida Marlins.
Dombrowski drew an interesting contrast between Bronfman and Ilitch: the former was very much a civic-minded owner, while Ilitch played the game and had an innate understanding of its nuances. There was no malice in his voice when he suggested to me that Ilitch, who was a young player of enough renown that the Tigers contemplated signing him, had a "little more feel" for what was happening on the field.
Dombrowski told the Detroit Free Press this weekend that Ilitch was the reason he joined the Tigers as president and chief executive officer before the 2002 season, which is of interest to Blue Jays fans since then-Toronto president and CEO Paul Godfrey made a determined play for Dombrowski as Gord Ash’s replacement. Dombrowski visited Toronto and was given a hard sales pitch, but in the end Ilitch paid him more money, essentially giving him the approval to fire then-Tigers GM Randy Smith whenever he wanted to (which turned out to be six games into the regular season). According to various reports, Ilitch either gave Dombrowski a small slice of Tigers ownership or other business considerations.
That was Ilitch: he could get what he wanted, yet somehow people still liked him.
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QUIBBLES AND BITS
• The Washington Capitals are in the middle of their CBA-mandated five-day break, riding a 12-game home winning streak and with goaltender Braden Holtby taking a respite from a streak of his own: Holtby has won 14 consecutive decisions, matching the second-longest streak in NHL history. That was set earlier this season by the Columbus Blue Jackets’ Sergei Bobrovsky. Gilles Gilbert of the Boston Bruins holds the NHL record of 17 in 1975-76.
• Hamilton’s Kia Nurse will be part of history Monday night if, as expected, the University of Connecticut Huskies women’s basketball team wins its 100th consecutive game against No. 6 South Carolina. Nurse, a product of St. Thomas More and guard on the Canadian national team, is the acknowledged leader of the 22-0 Huskies, who have won the last four NCAA women’s basketball titles and a total of 11 under head coach Geno Auriemma.
• James Johnson is one of the few players who have chafed under Dwane Casey’s tutelage with the Raptors, and Johnson’s been something to see this season with the Miami Heat. Johnson has scored at least 20 points off the bench in three consecutive games, and has seven 20-point games for the surprising Heat. Chris Gatling holds the club record with four consecutive 20-plus games off the bench, set from March 16-24, 1996. The club record for 20-point games off the bench in a single season is 10, held by Michael Beasley in 2008 and Kevin Edwards (1990).
THE ENDGAME
Look, I can see why professional athletes, particularly those who are members of a visible minority group, wouldn’t want to make one of those pilgrimages to Donald Trump’s Whitest House reserved for championship teams. It’s their right, and the president is a reprehensible human be … er, person.
But here’s the thing, as I mentioned (to no small amount of grief) on my radio show when I took Tim Thomas of the Bruins to task for not visiting Barack Obama’s White House: there is something to be said for honouring and respecting the office itself, and what it represents. It’s understandable in this case that six New England Patriots have indicated they won’t be going anywhere near a crypto-fascist like Trump. But there were far more worthy and dignified people who have held that office, and it stands for something that transcends political differences. The bigger person would, I think, go after making a very clear public statement against the president.
