Wednesday Bantering: Jays Bits

The Blue Jays haven’t been making much news early in spring training. Nor are they going to show us any spring games. We do get Sunday’s game on Sportsnet, they are going to carry the YES feed for that game, but they aren’t planning to broadcast any games themselves. I’d think that, since they are going to be playing their regular-season games, they would want to broadcast a few spring games from there, just to get the bugs out, at the very least.

And to let their, still unnamed broadcast team (radio and TV) a chance to practice together.

I suppose it is true that Sportsnet sort of, kind of, makes their own decisions. And, Sportsnet seems to be in the middle of a change of people who are in charge.

Longley, in the Sun, writes about decisions the team has to make before the season starts:

Among the renovations to elevate the Dunedin facility to big league standards, the team will have to determine where cameras will be placed to produce acceptable broadcast quality both for the Jays and for the visiting team.

Another concern the Jays are addressing is upgrading lighting at TD Ballpark, including the addition of four light standards to improve visibility of high fly balls.

You would think that if they are trying to decide where cameras should go, they might want to broadcast some games.

There was some news yesterday. Ryan Noda is the PTBNL (joining Kendall Williams) going to the Dodgers to complete the Ross Stripling trade. Noda turns 25 at the end of March. I don’t see him making the majors. Back in the days before teams had 8 and 9 man bullpens, Noda might be the type to be a pinch-hitter, I guess in the NL there is more chance he can get role like that. We’ve been following him so long, I’d love him to get a chance in the majors.

It is picture day in Dunedin. I love picture day because it means we soon will have new pictures of everyone on the 40-man roster, including some guys who we didn’t have any in Blue Jays jerseys.

Old friend Travis Snider was signed by other old friend Alex Anthopoulos. The way he puts this it makes it sound like Travis will make $600,000 ifor playing in the minors.

Jim Bowden has a list of ‘top breakout predictions for 2021’ and, no real surprise Vlad is on the list, but Lourdes Gurriel is also there. I’m not sure that he hasn’t already ‘broken out’ but I’ll be happy if he’s right. Among the things he said about Vlad:

Guerrero prefers to play third base, but I’m hoping they put him at first and leave him there so he can concentrate on raking the baseball. His bat speed is elite, he has light-tower power, and this is the year he makes the jump to a .350 on-base percentage and at least 30 dingers.

In the Gurriel piece is this:

Gurriel can play first base, second base and left field, and the initial plan is to start him in left, but the Blue Jays are open-minded about where to use him defensively.

I’d be surprised if Gurriel plays more than 40 innings at any position other than left. And he left third base out of his list of positions.