There isn’t a lot of news coming out of the Jays camp yet.
The first spring game is this Saturday, 1:00 Eastern, against the Phillies. We get a lot of games with the Phillies, as their spring home is about a 15-minute drive from Dunedin.
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The big baseball news is that Tony Clark is resigning as the executive director MLB Players Association. There are allegations that he has been pocketing licensing money, which some people frown upon. The US Department of Justice is investigating him. The timing isn’t good as MLB and the Players are starting long negotiations for the next CBA (which sounds very likely to cost us some baseball in 2027).
John Schneider had a speech for his players at the start of camp:
Schneider told the press that Vlad will be more of a leader now that Bo is gone. That sounds silly to me. I guess you have to talk to the press a lot, and you are going to say some silly stuff. The good part is that the team has a number of good leaders on the team. I’d think that George Springer and Kevin Gausman are as much leaders as anyone on the team.
Shi Davidi tells us that the Jays were looking to add more strikeouts to their pitching staff and that Ponce and Cease will do that, as well as having Bieber for a full (ish) season. We were sixth in the majors in strikeouts last year, but adding Ponce, Cease, and having Yesavage for the season could push them to the top of the strikeout leaderboard
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I like this quote:
“They’re funny, man, both of them,” Gausman said of Ponce and Cease. “They’re both weird and I think the best pitchers in the game are a little weird.”
If you want to see Kazuma Okamoto (who told reporters that he was very serious and very manly), Keegan Mathson posted some video:
Just a housekeeping note, I’m going to be on holiday mid-March to mid-April. We are going to Japan. I’m hoping to get to watch some baseball over there. Unlike last year, we should have internet service most of the time, but we could use an extra voice or two to help out Tom M keep this place going. If you would like to volunteer, send me an email.
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