Monday Bantering: Edwin’s return

Edwin Encarnacion (and the rest of that team from Cleveland) are coming to town.

There is a lot of talk about whether the fans at Rogers will boo him or not. I’m not a big fan of booing former players, and Edwin was, and always will be, a favorite of mine. I don’t understand what the value of booing him would be. “Hey you gave us some of the best moments of our franchise, I’m going to boo you.” That home run, in the Wild Card game, earns him my love for the rest of his life.

Sportsnet talks to some to the Jays players, finding out about what Edwin was like as a teammate. Not surprisingly, they all say he is a great guy. It isn’t like they were going to trash him, but it is a good read.

Edwin is off to a slow start, this season, hitting .217/.349/.377 with 5 home runs. Of course, if he was on the Blue Jays, his .726 OPS would be 1 point behind Kendrys Morales and he’d be considered one of the better hitters in our lineup. He’s had slow starts in the past, but I’d be ok with him staying cold for 3 more games.

The worrying part, if you happened to be a Clevelander fan, is his strikeouts. He’s striking out 30% of the time, this year. Last year he set a new career high for strikeouts at 19.7%. At one time he walked more than he struck out, but those days are gone.

The Star has a collection of great photos of Edwin.

The team hasn’t announced it, but it looks like Mike Bolsinger will be making tomorrow’s start. Mike has a 1.46 ERA in 4 games, 2 starts for the Bisons. In 12.1 innings he’s allowed 11 hits, 2 earned, 3 walks with 18 strikeouts. He had a pretty rough spring, so I’m thinking Buffalo’s pitching coach deserves a medal of some sort. Or it could be a small sample size.

I was hoping to get to see T.J. House, but I’m sure we’ll get a chance to see him sometime this season.

I’m not sure who will be heading back to Buffalo to make room for Bolsinger. It seems that Danny Barnes and Ryan Tepera are the usual suspects but they have both been pitching so well of late, maybe it’s Dominic Leone’s turn? He’s had a rough time the last couple of weeks.

We have an edge in tonight’s pitching match up:

But, I’m a bit worried about the ‘tightness’ that Stroman felt in his last start. Our bullpen has been working hard, of late, it would bee good if Stroman could go late into the game. I’m not expecting Bolsinger to give us a lot of innings tomorrow.

I was hoping to hear that Josh Donaldson wasn’t far from being ready to join the Jays, but it sounds like it will be awhile yet. I’m starting to wonder if Troy Tulowitzki will beat him back to the team.

Aaron Sanchez will be making a start, tomorrow, in extended spring training. All going well, he should start for us next weekend. And J.A. Happ is starting to throw, so he could be back within a couple of weeks.

Dalton Pompey said, on Twitter, that he was ready to start swinging a bat again, but he sees to have disappeared from Twitter, so I don’t know what is going on with him.