About a week away from pitchers and catchers reporting there isn't all that much for Jays news. Still waiting to see who is coming off the 40-man roster to make room for Kevin Gregg.
The Jays have added a couple of former GMs to their scouting staff: Jim Beattie who GMed the Expos and Orioles and Ed Lynch who was GM for the Cubs. Nice to see Anthopoulos continues to pick up experienced baseball people.
Former Jay outfielder Bobby Kielty is trying to make it back to the majors as a pitcher and apparently the Jays are one of the teams that are taking a look at him.
In the same piece MLB Trade Rumors says the Jays are 'interested' in Cuban first baseman Jose Julio Ruiz. Ruiz is 25, 6'2", 195 lb. He hit .305/.408/.467 in the Cuban league with 11 homers in 52 games. Pretty hard to tell how those numbers would translate to the majors, but collecting talent is never a bad thing.
This is a nice story in the Star about Ricky Romero's off season workout program.
If you think the second-year southpaw starter feels entitled to the top spot in the Jays' rotation with Roy Halladay gone, think again. Instead of waiting to be acclaimed the team's ace, Romero spent his off-season training hard to cement his spot among Toronto's starting pitchers.
"I'm humbled and hungry, man," Romero said. "I've never gotten complacent and I'm not about to start now. ... There's about 15 other guys that want my job and every one of them is hungry.
Tao of Stieb wonders what would be wrong with playing Snider in RF. Don't ask me. Ask Cito.
And if you are bored this afternoon, the nice people from Hotstove.com are going to talk to me about the Jay's off-season at 3:00 Eastern. So if you are tired of the work of reading my opinions and would rather just listen to them, that's the place to be. Since they are talking to Marc Topkin of the St. Petersburg Times and John Weisman of the LA Times before and after me, I almost feel like I'm in the big leagues. Until I trip over my tongue 52 times.