The Toronto Blue Jays’ situation at shortstop has been less than ideal since Bo Bichette went down with a knee injury a couple weeks ago. Joe Panik has gotten a lot of starts, with Santiago Espinal playing a platoon role. With Bichette’s return date uncertain (he’s at least resumed baseball activities), the Blue Jays opted for some immediate help, which will serve as potential Bichette insurance if his return is delayed and as a decent bench piece/pinch runner when Bichette comes back. Ken Rosenthal first reported Jonathan Villar is headed from Miami to Toronto/Buffalo. Craig Mish first reported the return as Griffin Conine.

Blue Jays receive:

• Jonathan Villar

Marlins receive:

• PTBNL (Griffin Conine)

Eric Longenhagen put a 40 on Conine in the offseason, noting his power, but also his strikeouts. The 23-year-old has yet to play above Low-A. Villar is a little bit below average as a batter and a bit below average as a shortstop as well. He’s generally a good baserunner and base stealer, though he’s been thrown out five times in 14 chances this season and his sprint speed is down quite a bit from previous years. Read the rest of this entry »

When the league announced an expanded playoff format on the eve of the season, the Blue Jays were clear beneficiaries. In the old, five-team format, we gave them just a 9.7% chance of reaching the postseason; the cream of the AL crop had a stranglehold on those spots. With eight spots and only six teams in the top tier (New York, Tampa Bay, Minnesota, Cleveland, Houston, and Oakland), however, there was more space for interlopers. The Jays’ playoff odds in the new format opened the season at 29.8%.

With roughly half the season in the books, their odds have only increased. After Wednesday’s games, the Jays looked like a clear favorite for the final spot in the playoffs:

Still, as evidenced by the fact that their odds still hover at only 65%, they don’t have anything sewn up. Their pitching, in particular, has been a weak point. Hyun Jin Ryu has been as good as advertised holding down the rotation, but you can’t make a rotation out of one pitcher. Nate Pearson has struggled in his first taste of the big leagues and is currently on the Injured List, Matt Shoemaker has a lat strain, and Trent Thornton has hardly pitched this year due to injury. Piecing together the 31 remaining games of the season looked like a challenge.

To that end, the Blue Jays brought in reinforcements today, acquiring Taijuan Walker from the Mariners. In return, they’re sending a player to be named later. Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic confirmed that the player will be outside the 60-man player pool of players eligible to be traded in-season this year, which means we won’t officially know who it is until the offseason, but the Jays have no shortage of interesting prospects. Read the rest of this entry »

Five of the first 12 picks in the 2016 draft were high school pitchers. In order, those selections were: Ian Anderson to the Braves (third overall), Riley Pint to the Rockies (fourth), Braxton Garrett to the Marlins (seventh), Matt Manning to the Tigers (ninth), and Jay Groome to the Red Sox (12th). Not surprisingly, their respective development paths have varied, injuries hindering the progress of fully half.

Chris Mears — at the time a pitching crosschecker for the Red Sox — was especially enamored with Manning.

“I liked his athleticism, his looseness, his fastball quality,” said Mears, who is now one of Boston’s two pitching coordinators, along with Shawn Haviland. “I thought he would be a longer-term development type guy — the Tigers have done a really good job; he’s made adjustments faster than I would have anticipated — but I remember him being a guy I really wanted.”

Asked why he’d viewed him as a longer-term project, Mears cited Manning’s basketball background, and “less pitching experience than many high-school draftees have at that point in their careers.” Moreover, Manning is 6’ 6” and “usually those long-lever guys take a little bit longer to get the feel of repeating their delivery.” Mears also saw a breaking ball that while having good shape and spin, wasn’t always consistent.

Which doesn’t mean he wasn’t enthralled with his potential. Mears first saw Manning at the Arizona Fall Classic, and based on that look he and Josh Labandeira, Boston’s Northern California area scout, went to see him early the following spring. Read the rest of this entry »

Three 19-year-old pitchers rank prominently on our Toronto Blue Jays Top Prospects list. Simeon Woods Richardson is most notable, at No. 2, while Adam Kloffenstein and Kendall Williams are 12th and 13th respectively. Right-handers all, each possesses a high ceiling, yet is years away from progressing to the big-league level.

Their developmental situations are currently quite different. Woods Richardson is in Toronto’s 60-man player pool, and thus is at the club’s alternative training site. Kloffenstein is playing independent ball back home in Texas. Williams is also home, but doing the bulk of his throwing in side sessions, relying on a Rapsodo rather than the reactions of opposing hitters to gauge his progress.

I recently asked Blue Jays farm director Gil Kim how the organization is handling player development sans a minor-league season. Prefacing his answer by saying the top priority is ensuring the health and safety of all involved, he said there are a lot of Zoom calls, and that each player has a small support staff that checks in on a regular basis. A show-your-work component exists within many of the exchanges. Player plans being paramount, videos of the work being done are being shared. As Kim explained, “There’s more of a technical and mechanical focus for a lot of those players, especially the younger guys who are not at the alternate training site right now.”

In that respect, Woods Richardson is fortunate. Read the rest of this entry »

Kyle Higashioka never walks alone. The 30-year-old New York Yankees catcher is an ardent Liverpool FC supporter, having adopted the English Premier League team in 2007. A California prep at the time, Higashioka “stumbled across some Steven Gerrard highlight videos on YouTube” — this shortly after Liverpool had lost a Champions League final — and the die was cast. He’s been hooked ever since.

There is irony to his infatuation. Higashioka was drafted and signed by the Yankees in 2008, and two years later, Liverpool FC was purchased by the John Henry-led Fenway Sports Group. Yes, Higashioka lives and dies with a soccer club that operates within the Red Sox umbrella.

He’s not apologizing. Pointing out that Henry was once a minority owner of the Yankees, Higashioka stated that supporting a baseball team and supporting Liverpool are two completely different things. Moreover, he “started liking [Liverpool] before the Red Sox owners bought them; it’s kind of the luck of the draw who owns a team.”

A fair-weather fan he’s not. Along with staying true during the downtimes — “the Roy Hodgson days wren’t great” — Higashioka has gone out of his way to watch matches. Greenwich Mean Time and the Pacific Time Zone differ by eight hours.

“Living in California, I would meet up with the Orange County Liverpool Supporters Club,” explained the Huntington Beach native. “I remember an opening-week match where I met them at the pub at 4 a.m. to watch a game against Stoke.” Read the rest of this entry »

Our oddball 2020 season has featured a lot of strange sights and next week, we’ll get another one, when the Toronto Blue Jays stage their home opener (or at least, their first home game not played in another major league team’s park) in another country. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the shall we say mixed success the United States has had combating the spread of the virus, Canada refused to grant the exemptions needed for the Blue Jays to play their season in Toronto.

“Based on the best-available public health advice, we have concluded the cross-border travel required for MLB regular season play would not adequately protect Canadians’ health and safety,” Canada’s Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship said Saturday in a statement. “As a result, Canada will not be issuing a National Interest Exemption for the MLB’s regular season at this time.”

Canada’s statement seemingly leaves open the possibility that the Blue Jays could come home for a theoretical postseason series if the environment is more favorable. But that would be a few months away, so Toronto’s next home game will be played — or at least is scheduled to be played — in upstate New York rather than the Queen City. And when I say upstate New York, I mean upstate New York; we’re leaving behind the pizza, bagels, and pastrami of the city for beef on weck, grape pies, steamed hams, Buffalo’s eponymous chicken wings, and Sahlen Field, which is usually home to Toronto’s Triple-A affiliate and this year will host the migratory Jays. Read the rest of this entry »

The impact of the Marlins’ outbreak of coronavirus and Sunday’s ill-fated decision to allow the team to play the Phillies continues to resonate throughout major league baseball. Both teams have now reported more positive tests within their organizations, and more games have been postponed, causing a ripple effect within the schedule. Meanwhile, the league is reportedly upgrading its protocols, has launched an investigation into the outbreak, and has reached an agreement with the Major League Baseball Players Association to reduce doubleheader games to seven innings apiece, just as the necessity for such twin bills appears to be increasing by the day as the postponements mount.

How necessary? On Friday morning, MLB Network’s Jon Heyman reported that the night’s game between the Cardinals and Brewers — neither of which team has crossed paths with the Marlins or Phillies — has been postponed as well due to multiple positive tests on the Cardinals. Sportsgrid’s Craig Mish followed up with a report that it’s two players infected. The team has been instructed to self-isolate. In other words, a new front in MLB’s battle to forge ahead has opened up.

Folks, it’s going great.

Since publishing my latest update on the subject on Wednesday morning, three additional Marlins players, all as yet unidentified, have tested positive, bringing the team’s total to 18 players and two coaches. The majority of those players are unidentified, but among those reported to be infected are catcher Jorge Alfaro, first baseman Garrett Cooper, shortstop Miguel Rojas, right fielder Harold Ramirez, and starters Sandy Alcantara and José Ureña. ESPN’s Jesse Rogers reports that the infected players and other personnel will be driven back to Miami on sleeper buses, while the rest will continue on their road trip. Read the rest of this entry »

The nerves were easy to see in the eyes of Nate Pearson during the third batter of Wednesday’s game between the Toronto Blue Jays and Washington Nationals. It was the 23-year-old right-hander’s major league debut, and he had just allowed the first baserunner of his career on a four-pitch walk to Adam Eaton. With the camera aimed at first base, viewers saw Eaton get a big lead, then take another step, then another. Pearson never looked his way. His eyes were straight ahead, beads of sweat already forming under his cap, as he concentrated like the only thing he could think about was making sure his next offering was a strike. It didn’t work. He bounced a slider in the dirt, then turned to see Eaton standing on second base without a throw.

By the time he finished his first career outing, those nerves appeared to be gone. Pearson showed there was no need for nervousness. He ended up throwing five shutout innings, allowing just two hits and two walks while striking out five. The Nationals ultimately won the game anyway, 4-0, thanks to stellar pitching by their own starter — some guy named Max Scherzer — but even in a shortened season in which every game is crucial to a Toronto team on the fringes of a playoff hunt, it’s difficult to think of a reason for a Blue Jays fan to feel anything other than pure excitement over Wednesday’s game.

Pearson’s journey to a big-league mound was a bumpy one. He had a screw put in his throwing elbow in high school, and he was used mainly as a reliever at Central Florida Junior College, albeit an extremely good one. Toronto drafted him 28th overall in 2017 with the intention of stretching him out to be a starter, and he started at Advanced-A in 2018. A couple of injuries, however — an intercostal strain and a fractured arm caused by a line drive back to the mound — limited him to just 1.2 innings for the whole season.

When he finally returned in 2019, the Blue Jays challenged him, asking him to pitch across three levels of the minors. And despite only throwing 21.2 pro innings in the 22 months since he’d been drafted, he responded well, totaling 101.2 frames and allowing just 26 runs on 63 hits with 27 walks and 109 strikeouts. As he began throwing in Blue Jays camp this spring, it was obvious he had the stuff to make the Opening Day rotation, but there were quickly rumblings of the team keeping him in the minors to start the season for just long enough to delay his free agency by a year. Wednesday, as it happens, was the first day the Blue Jays could add Pearson to the roster without him getting a full year of service time in 2020. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m biased, but I think summer in Vancouver can be one of the most beautiful seasons anywhere in the world. The rainforest, having spent the autumn, winter, and spring growing lush under the cover of clouds and rain, shines rich green under the sun, illuminated by the light coming off the ocean. It’s hot, but not overwhelmingly so. On some days, you can look out over the water and see the spout of a humpback whale or the dark, swift-moving fins of a transient orca pod. And at sunset, the bright place where the sky and the ocean meet seem to go on forever.

In the summer of 2017, fires engulfed the Pacific Northwest. There was record heat; record time passed between rainfalls. I spent that summer working in a basement shop, bitter and sad, and when I emerged from the top of the staircase at the end of every day, I would often see a sky choked thick with ash and smoke, the sun swollen and red. Everything that was normally so vibrant was cast over with a dull haze. It was sometimes difficult to breathe. I thought, at the time, that it seemed apocalyptic: the reality of climate change clearly visible above me, around me, hanging in the air itself.

That was the summer Nate Pearson came to town.

***

The Vancouver Canadians are the Blue Jays’ short-season affiliate, playing in the Northwest League. Baseball has a long, diverse history in Vancouver, though the city isn’t exactly baseball-crazy. Back when the Canadians were a Triple-A franchise, affiliated most recently with the A’s, there were some pretty lean years in terms of attendance and interest. But a renovation of their ballpark, the 68-year-old Nat Bailey Stadium, and affiliation with the recently-successful Blue Jays has made the franchise one of the healthiest and most well-attended in the minor leagues. The banners around the stadium show some of the Canadians alumni who are currently successful major leaguers — Kevin Pillar, Marcus Stroman, and Noah Syndergaard, to name a few.

They show, too, the legends who visited and played in Vancouver in days long gone: Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, who came north on barnstorming trips. Though thoroughly renovated for the demands of a 21st-century baseball team, the Nat is deliberate in making you feel its history. A little museum is tucked into the concourse under the grandstand; the tall wooden scoreboard is a replica of the original, salvaged from the remains of Sick’s Stadium in Seattle. Read the rest of this entry »

The last time I saw Matt Shoemaker was on the grass, grimacing in pain. It was last year in Oakland; Shoemaker ran over to cover first on a groundball, then crumpled to the ground. He had torn his ACL.

As I wrote then, it was a cruel, unfair freak accident for someone who had seen far too many of those in his career. Shoemaker, though, seemed determined to push through. I was rooting for him to return and succeed. On Saturday, finally, he made his first start in over a year — having, again, overcome adversity to come back to the field.

And though he was making his return in front of an empty stadium, in the middle of a global crisis, it was hard not to give in to the creeping feeling of joy, sneaking in from behind the anxiety. It is wonderful to see someone succeed in spite of everything.

***

“Overcoming adversity” is about as tired a baseball cliche as there is. Look deep enough into the background of pretty much any player and you’ll find adversity that was overcome — that’s just the nature of life, and especially the nature of pursuing a career as stressful, all-consuming, and specialized as professional baseball. That’s not to say that these stories aren’t worth hearing: It’s important to understand the lifetimes of effort and struggle that go into the games we watch for entertainment. But flattening every story into a pat tale of “overcoming adversity” doesn’t do justice to the gravity of players’ experiences. Read the rest of this entry »