Some caveats.
The numbers don’t mean anything, of course. And they wouldn’t even if the best player on the Toronto Blue Jays, Josh Donaldson, hadn’t spent all spring telling everybody the at-bats themselves don’t even matter. It’s the health, stupid.
Yet if we can all agree that job No. 1 for the Blue Jays is avoiding another start like last season’s 8-17, there is nothing wrong with looking at how individuals have performed this spring to get a read on the likelihood that they are ready to go ahead of Thursday’s home opener against the New York Yankees.
The left-field platoon of Steve Pearce and especially Curtis Granderson has, for what it’s worth, had a better spring than Melvin Upton, Jr. did in 2017 even though Pearce couldn’t make it through without an injury. Kevin Pillar has had a solid spring. Just as he did last season. Randal Grichuk had an oblique injury. Jose Bautista, last season’s incumbent right-fielder, didn’t hit a home run all spring and told us all not to worry. He hit one homer in the first month of the season, en route to becoming a net offensive and defensive minus — perhaps the worst regular right-fielder in the game.
Truth is that the blazingly hot Teoscar Hernandez is, right now, better than anything the Blue Jays had in left or right field last season. Ditto for Anthony Alford.
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Donaldson doesn’t seem to care about spring training and I trust him. Nothing to see here. Aledmys Diaz/Yangervis Solarte/Danny Espinosa have been just this side of underwhelming but in 2017 the job was Troy Tulo … uh, never mind. Justin Smoak has had a similar sort of spring as last year when he made the all-star game. Kendrys Morales has been Kendrys Morales. Russ Martin has been Russ Martin; given the weight of a catcher’s workload in spring training I just give them all a mulligan.
Devon Travis has been the story of the spring for position players. Healthy, he will go into the season with three times as many at bats as he did last spring, when he hit .130 in April and went off in May to the tune of .364 before getting hurt.
If there is another statistic to hang on to besides Travis’s at-bats, it is the fact that the Blue Jays starters left Florida second in the majors in spring WHIP. That’s a bad thing considering the likelihood of a pitcher facing a bona fide major-league hitter increases the earlier that pitcher appears in the game. It’s also not a bad thing because, if healthy, it’s the one and only area the Blue Jays have a significant edge over anybody else in the American League East or, for that matter, 90 per cent of MLB teams.
Ah, but it’s really true, isn’t it, that in the end we are left with what is largely a matter of trust? It’s a bit like the way it is in 29 other cities. But my guess is the level of trust in this marketplace is less than it’s been in the past three years.
Only one way to turn that around.
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NOW TWEET THIS
• Best news of the week, or many a week, was that friend of The Blair Show Eddie Olczyk announced he was cancer-free. The game needs him; we all need him. #goodnews
• The Phillies just gave the Blue Jays a blueprint: playing second base prospect Scott Kingery at shortstop, third and in the outfield and signing him to a six-year, $24-million deal with options for three years of free agency. #pagingbobichette
• LeBron James surpassed Wilt Chamberlain with 51 games as high scorer/rebounder/assist-maker. James, 33, on Monday became the second-oldest player to produce a 40-point triple double. He is also the youngest player to do so, at aged 20. #king
• Get used to catchers going for strolls as the Pirates’ Francisco Cervelli did after Gift Ngoepe’s bunt attempt Sunday; anywhere but the pitcher’s mound, which would constitute a visit. #walkthisway
• One thing we need to agree upon, Toronto: can we kindly stop bitching about Patrick Marleau’s contract and its impact on James van Reimsdyk until after the post-season? Geezus. #enjoytheride
• Beware the Devils, who are 3-0 against the Lightning and are a potential first-round matchup for Tampa, and 3-0 against the Pittsburgh Penguins with a game remaining against them on Thursday. #helltopay
• Any doubt Alex Anthopoulos has the courage of his convictions after what happened in Toronto has been removed by starting Ronald Acuna in the minor leagues and sucking up the $17.6-million left on Scott Kazmir’s contract. #nofoolhe
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THE ENDGAME
If the folks who are vested in advancing the cause of women’s hockey want to get serious about the sport, they should view as an invitation NHL commissioner Gary Bettman’s suggestion that the league would start its own women’s hockey league if the Canadian Women’s Hockey League and National Women’s Hockey League didn’t exist.
Failure to do so will ensure that women’s hockey remains little more than an intramural competition between the same old Canadian and American faces; a sport that almost guilts people into following it.
Ideally, each NHL team would be obligated to ice a women’s team. But even if some balk, a framework could be in place in much the same way as some English Premiership clubs field women’s squads. My guess is it would be easy to use media and possibly even governments to ratchet up pressure on reluctant NHL teams. Either way, I’d hate to see women’s hockey go the way of university sports in our country. I’d hate to see it be so afraid of success that it settles for being a niche pastime. Hey, it may not work. But it isn’t working right now, either.
Jeff Blair hosts The Jeff Blair Show from 9 to 11 a.m. ET and Baseball Central from 11 a.m. to noon ET on Sportsnet 590/The Fan.
