Last night the Blue Jays traded Steve Pearce to the Red Sox for infield prospect Santiago Espinal, who had been playing for the Carolina League (A-advanced) Salem Red Sox. But who is Espinal beyond the stats table? This week we’ll bring on Around The Nest alumnus Ben Gellman-Chomsky—now the Voice of the Salem Red Sox—to give his eyewitness scouting report of the Jays’ newest baby bird.
Around The Nest is moving into its longer format now that every level of the minor leauges is active. We expect appearances from Rob Fai of the Vancouver Canadians, Dante De Caria of the Lansing Lugnuts, Pat Malacaro of the Buffalo Bisons, Jim Tarabocchia of the Dunedin Blue Jays, Zach Helton of the Bluefield Blue Jays, one of the Tylers from New Hampshire, and of course all of them will be talking with our inimitable host Jesse Goldberg-Strassler.
The podcast broadcasts live here starting at 4 pm ET. You can also download an archived copy after the show if you can’t catch it live.
Here’s the episode summary from Jesse:
On this week’s show, we hear the scouting report on Santiago Espinal, the shortstop acquired from the Red Sox for Steve Pearce; congratulate Triple-A All-Stars Jason Leblebijian and Danny Jansen; celebrate Jonathan Davis hitting for the first cycle in New Hampshire Fisher Cats history; plus the early reviews of Griffin Conine and the 2018 draft class! It’s another week of Jay-talking around the organization.
And we invite members of Bluebird Banter to put in their questions of the week in the comments below and our broadcasters will try to answer as many as they can during the show.
My question for the broadcasters: What were some memorable stories of players finding out that they got traded? Who tells them and how do they generally react?