Thursday Bantering: Stroman loses in arbitration

Marcus Stroman announced, on twitter, that he lost his arbitration hearing with the Blue Jays. Marcus was seeking $6.9 million but the arbitrator went with the Jays number, $6.5 million. I imagine he’ll get by. Maybe less avocado toast. Maybe if we all bought a HDMH cap?

What I hate about arbitration is the team has to make a case against the player, right in front of him. As Marcus says “the negative things that were said against me, by my own team”. I never like the idea of the team having to tell the player where he comes up short, but I’d imagine Marcus will use it to fuel him.

Troy Tulowitzki is dealing with a heel spur. They are saying he won’t need surgery The team says he should be ok, but he might have a slow start to spring training. The poor guy can’t seem to catch a break.

It is Russell Martin’s 35th birthday.

He has apparently come to camp with a little more muscle. Last year he dropped some weight over the winter and he had tough luck with injuries. This year he says “Not trying to get super-swole, but just get some strength just so I can have that confidence that I’m not going to break down.”

Let’s look up that word:

swole (comparative more swole, superlative most swole) Pertaining to men showboating themselves in front of one another, sometimes before a fight. The swole boy aggravated me, so I laid him out. (slang) Having large, well-developed muscles.

Ok, I haven’t heard that one before, but I’m definitely not swole.

Anyway, happy birthday Russell. Hope you are having a good one.

Russell said some nice things about Aaron Sanchez’ time throwing off the mound:

The ball was coming out free and easy, lot of life to it, good movement. But all his pitches, they looked the same coming out and that’s kind of the key as a pitcher, the art of deception. Everything has to look the same.

The change-up was coming out nice, the breaking stuff was sharp. The delivery just looked clean and he looked comfortable out there. Definitely good for a first day of work.

Let’s hope it’s a good year for Aaron.