Romero threw 4 innings of no hit ball. He did walk 2 and struck out 4.
Lawrie is still laughing at spring training pitching. He was 1 for 1 today with a run scored and a stolen base. He is now hitting .609 this spring. I am wondering why he only had one at-bat though, hope it's not injury related.
Yunel has finally started hitting as he was 2 for 3 today. Bautista was 1 for 2.
Snider goes 2 for 3 with a homer off Johnny Nunez and is now hitting .333 spring training.
just needed to use those emoticons...
How can they not start Snider?
He has been so good at the plate. Leading the team in HR and RBI.
Lawrie did indeed leave with an injury. Groin Injury...
He didn't pull up or anything on the play, so I'm not worried. Actually kinda happy he knew enough to pull himself for something minor at this stage. He'll sit a day or two then be back out there.
Thames with an excellent bunt down the third base line. They were playing him to pull and they were deep. He gets a first pitch fastball on the outside corner and executes the bunt perfectly. He's 2 for 2 so far today (double earlier in the game). Snider is 0 for 1 with a walk in the other game, he got picked off by beachy.
Morrow hasn't looked sharp; he's a little all over the place but Philly only has a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the 4th. Jimmy Rollins went deep to begin the bottom of the first. Morrow has used curve and change up more than the slider in this game. His change up has had good movement and curve has been erratic and as I was typing this, he just threw a beauty to pence, but pence didn't bite, but it was a great pitch. His 4th inning is looking very nice to begin with, spotting the fastball right on the corners, didn't get a couple of borderline pitches.
Just to finish up, Morrow has just given up 2 hits in the 4th, but both were soft hits. Rolen blooped one into centerfield. And now mayberry stayed back on a curve ball that hit the end of the bat and dropped into centerfield. Good pitch, better hitting on the second one. That ends his day...
DUNEDIN, Fla. -- Cecil is 3-0 this spring with a 0.90 ERA. He has allowed six hits in 10 innings. Toronto gave him the lead in the third when Gomes hit the first of his two doubles and Yunel Escobar singled him home.
The arms:
Brett Cecil gave up one run on four hits in four innings of work. The Phillies scored their lone run on Cecil in the first when Shane Victorino tripled and Hunter Pence drove him home. Cecil’s velocity was down — his fastball registered at 85-87 mph, according to mlb.com — but his command was spot on. The left-hander threw 20 of 21 pitches for strikes and recorded two strikeouts and no walks. Francisco Cordero allowed one run on three hits, and Carlos Villanueva, Jason Frasor and Casey Janssen combined for four scoreless innings.
The bats:
Right-fielder Jose Bautista hit his third home run of the spring in a 15-hit assault by the Jays, who scored five runs against Phillies starter Cole Hamels. Catcher Yan Gomes, who went 3-for-3, and shortstop Yunel Escobar both hit a pair of doubles.
Covering the bases:
Brett Lawrie, who suffered a mild groin strain rounding third base on Friday, was “held out of any work” Sunday. Manager John Farrell told reporters Lawrie was improving, although there is no target date for the third baseman’s return … The Jays do not play Monday and will send Dustin McGowan to the mound against the Red Sox on Tuesday.
Cecil threw a lot more than 21 pitches; probably around 50-60. I'm pretty sure mlb.com has it wrong...
yeah, that must be wrong.
Quote:
PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. -- ...Ramirez went home to the Dominican Republic, after the worst year of his career, and sought out a man he says has been "a big inspiration to me," Toronto's Jose Bautista, and let Bautista push him to places he'd never been before.
"I never worked that much," Ramirez said.
"But I knew that I needed it because I didn't play the whole season. The other years, I always played over 150 games, so I just went back, got some rest and started [working out] in January. But after what happened last year, I knew I needed to work harder to get back soon on the field."
So when he showed up in spring training, only five months after shoulder surgery, he was ready to throw himself into the biggest challenge of his career -- the transition to third base after a lifetime of playing short. And there were many, many eyeballs watching to see how he went about that.
DUNEDIN, Florida -- "A million things," the Toronto Blue Jays general manager says, when asked what interrupts his sleep now.
"It’s almost in a sick and twisted way, that if something’s not keeping me awake something is wrong. Knowing how hard it is to win. Knowing the teams that we’re going up against -- not to say that we don’t have talent and that we don’t have a chance to compete against those teams. It’s not the money and the resources. It’s the brains in those front offices that we’re going up against….
"There’s a ton of performance risk because of the volatility of the youth. We don’t have a bunch of players that have done it five years in a row."
"80 per cent of players who get to arbitration -- that’s three years of major league service -- are optioned at least once," he says.
"Almost everybody goes down. And that’s what tempers my enthusiasm, or makes my expectations a little more realistic."
"...I’ve been a sports fan. I’ve been exposed to so much of it whether it was general managers in other sports or general managers here. I know it’s par for the course….There are so many times I’d love to just like to come out and say everything that goes into every trade, everything that goes into every roster decision. There’s a lot of times there’s a health concern. I can’t come out and talk about a player’s health. Or there’s a make-up concern or a clubhouse concern. I’m always going to protect the player. I do a lot behind closed doors."
... what about that apparently offhand remark about operating within "payroll parameters", suggesting that bigger spending would only follow bigger attendance at the Rogers Centre?
Anthopoulos says that it wasn’t offhand at all, that it was absolutely by design.
"I normally don’t slip with something like that," he says.
"If you slip you say it once and you say ‘oops’ and you shut it down and you change course. I repeated myself and repeated myself and repeated myself. The media was saying we were adding a lot of payroll. That just wasn’t going to happen. But somehow the train left the station and people went crazy. I thought someone has got to put brakes to the train."
"We have yet to lose a player because of money," Anthopoulos says.
"We have been able to extend every player we wanted to extend."
"I don’t want to use free agency to build a contender," Anthopoulos says
"We want to be a contender and use free agency to continue being a contender. I’d rather stay out of it entirely. But we have the ability to do it at some time. That’s an avenue that we have where Tampa is a little bit restricted."
"The one thing (Gillick) said was, don’t lose your nerve," Anthopoulos says.
"It’s so easy to get caught up in what the fans and the media say. That’s not a knock. I live it. You can’t avoid it. But I always go back to what Pat said: Do what you want to do."
Been listening to the game on radio. Morrow's numbers are good. He had one hiccup where he walked back to back hitters and fell behind the third hitter after coming back in the inning (2nd inning I believe). He didn't allow his first hit until the 5th inning I believe. But the numbers I was really interested in was the GB:FB ratio. 7:3 for the game. He only had one K, but his focus has really been on getting early outs.
On a side note, Phillies offense has a chance to be terrible or well at least below average. No Utley, No Howard. Aging Rollins. They're really pinning their hopes on guys like Victorino, Pence and Mayberry until Howard comes back...
Been listening to the game on radio. Morrow's numbers are good. He had one hiccup where he walked back to back hitters and fell behind the third hitter after coming back in the inning (2nd inning I believe). He didn't allow his first hit until the 5th inning I believe. But the numbers I was really interested in was the GB:FB ratio. 7:3 for the game. He only had one K, but his focus has really been on getting early outs.
On a side note, Phillies offense has a chance to be terrible or well at least below average. No Utley, No Howard. Aging Rollins. They're really pinning their hopes on guys like Victorino, Pence and Mayberry until Howard comes back...
And even then, Howard hasn't been great for 2 years.
Also - never trust pitch count stats on mlb.com during spring training. They're never right.
Ian (Toronto)
Hey Keith. The Jays missed out on signing Tyler Beede, much to the disappointment of fans. Now that time has passed and we have more data on Beede, do you think this is a miss the Jays will come to regret?
Law
No. And they didn’t miss out. The two sides couldn’t agree on how healthy he was, so the discussion fell apart. He has not looked good so far this year, according to a half-dozen scouts I’ve talked to who’ve seen him.
In 5 games so far for Vanderbilt, Beede is 0-3, 7.71 ERA with 18.2 IP, 27 H, 18 Ks to 5 BBs.
I'm guessing maybe the Jays found out about his health after drafting him. Otherwise, I don't see them drafting a player that they don't want to sign. I fully believe Jays intended to sign him and would've given him the 2 million if it warranted it. I think the health concern might have been a red flag...
I'm guessing maybe the Jays found out about his health after drafting him. Otherwise, I don't see them drafting a player that they don't want to sign. I fully believe Jays intended to sign him and would've given him the 2 million if it warranted it. I think the health concern might have been a red flag...
I believe that players are required to submit their own medical reports, which can be skewed in the players' favour. The Jays and all other temas obviously do their own with Dr. Andrews and they found some stuff they didn't like. Beede's Dad put this on twitter, then quickly deleted it:
Am I the only one really annoyed by the Votto talk simply because he is Canadian? Is there anything else to base all the talk on?
I hope the Jays stay totally away from Votto. He's going to be a bad investment to whichever team signs him to a huge deal at the age of 29. Don't trade for him and don't pursue him in free agency.
Re: Toronto Blue Jays 2012 Season Thread
just needed to use those emoticons...
