I’m back home in Toronto, and it’s a nicer day here than it was in Florida when I left yesterday.  That’s kind of awesome, and equally frightening.  But this isn’t a blog about what the hell we have done to the Earth that’s causing this crazy weather - I’ll leave that to the scientific community to try to figure out.

Baseballically, we’re all still waiting for the Jays to officially announce that they’ve signed Cuban shortstop Adeiny Hechevarria to a four-year deal in the $10 million neighbourhood.  The official announcement of another of the world’s worst-kept secrets should come anytime now.

So what’s the deal with Hechevarria?  Generally, I know as much as you do, assuming you’ve looked the guy up online (you don’t expect me to do ALL the work, do you?).  He’s drawn physical comparisons to Alfonso Soriano, which means he’s similar physically to Hank Aaron, but that could not mean less.  Who cares like whom he’s built?  He’s never played for the Cuban National Team, so we haven’t had a chance to see him at the World Baseball Classic or anything like that, so there’s an opportunity for armchair scouting lost.

What we do know is that multiple major-league scouts feel as though he has a good chance to play a solid shortstop in the major leagues and hit at that level.  We also know that the Yankees wanted him to become Derek Jeter’s eventual successor and that the Angels, who currently have two big-league shortstops in Erick Aybar and Maicer Izturis, were also very interested.  That’s good news.

Hechevarria looks to be set to start at AA New Hampshire, which would allow Justin Jackson to repeat Dunedin.  Once you’re at AA, you’re just a heartbeat away from the bigs, though I doubt very much the Jays would rush him.

There are questions about what the contract means, since it’s for four years, so here are some answers:

-First, it’s not ten million dollars per year, that’s paid over the life of the contract.

-Second, and more importantly, he would still be under the Blue Jays’ control for at least six years.  The length of the contract doesn’t change that.  He’d be eligible for arbitration once his contract expires if he’d accumulated between three and six years of major league service by then and he’ll be eligible for free agency after the season in which he reaches six years of major-league service.

He could potentially be under the Jays’ control through the 2018 season.

I’m really looking forward to seeing him play - the last successful homegrown Blue Jays shortstop was Alex Gonzalez (not the one who plays for them now), and even that depends on how much you want to stretch the definition of successful.

A couple of notes from the few days past, since I’m not down in FLA to give you the blow-by-blows anymore:

-Travis Snider’s swing seems to be coming around, and I have done a complete 180 over the course of the last week as to his chances of making the team.  Two home runs today tell me things continue to develop well and that he’ll be in the line-up Opening Day, which is bad news for Joey Gathright and likely Jeremy Reed, as well.  Of course, Edwin Encarnacion’s wrist will have a lot to say about the Opening Day roster, too.

-Brian Tallet pitched awfully well yesterday, solidifying his hold on the fifth starter’s job.  I don’t mind him being rewarded for the great job he did last season, stepping into the breach when the Jays needed him.  If he makes four starts in April and Dustin McGowan or Brett Cecil is ready on May 1st, that’s not the end of the world.

Oh, and I owe you a JaysTalk - here’s the one from this past Sunday:

Download audio file (jaystalk-mw-20100314.mp3)

Remember, we’re on the air with full pre- and post-game shows this weekend, starting at 12:30 PM Eastern both Saturday and Sunday!  I’ll try to get to the comments that are in the hopper before then.

Rational, reasonable comments are always welcome!

Dustin McGowan threw his second simulated game of the spring this morning, and once again passed every test with flying colours.

This game was different from the last one - there was actually a defense behind him, for one, and while he still threw only two innings, the goal this time was for him to throw between 40 and 45 pitches.  He wound up throwing 44, 27 of them for strikes.

Ironically, McGowan didn’t need the defense in his first inning of work.  He struck out all four batters he faced (Aaron Mathews, John Tolisano, Chris Aguila and Tyler Pastornicky), kind of.  Catcher/ umpire C.J. Ebarb lost track of the count with Tolisano up, so Tolisano actually struck out swinging on a 4-2 fastball.

In the second inning, McGowan gave up a hard-hit ground single up the middle to leadoff man Moises Sierra, but got Eric Thames to ground into a 3-6-3 double play on the next pitch.  Mathews then grounded out to third on a 1-0 delivery, which means that McGowan would have gotten his three outs on just six pitches, but he needed to throw about 20.  So Tolisano came back up and gave the assembled group of coaches and staff (I was the only reporter there - dig me) a collective heart attack by shooting a hard grounder right back through the box.  McGowan twisted out of the way and it got through for a single.  Aguila then struck out again and Pastornicky grounded into a game-ending 6-4-3 double play.

Two innings, ten outs - as opposed to the two innings, three outs that McGowan threw last time.  Time of the game - 27 minutes.

More importantly, McGowan looked and felt great.  The fastball was firm and strong, and not dead straight, probably in the 92-93 mile an hour range.  He threw a couple of good change-ups and a couple of very good sliders.  He seemed to tire a bit at the end of the outing, and the ball started to come up, but again, this was another test passed with flying colours.

The stuff he is showing now is good enough for major-league work, for the Jays’ brass it’s just a matter of McGowan being able to bounce back and to be stretched out.  I still believe they’re leaning towards starting him on the disabled list, keeping him back in extended spring, until they’re sure that he’s strong enough and ready to throw 100 pitches in the majors every five days.

If McGowan feels no more than normal soreness tomorrow and the next day, the next step will be for him to pitch in a minor-league game, likely on Friday.  Chances are he gets at least two of those before he makes an appearance in a Grapefruit League game, if he does at all.  But all signs are fantastic to this point - even moreso when you consider that even McGowan himself was thinking just a few months ago that there was a good chance he’d never pitch again.

I talked to Dustin right after the sim game, and that interview will be on this afternoon’s pre-game show - tune in, it begins in about an hour!

Today’s will be my last Grapefruit League game of this spring, so it’ll be your last chance to JaysTalk it up with me from FLA - don’t waste the opportunity!

I’m not going to post on the blog after the game today, since we’re following up the broadcast with the annual tradition of Birthday Chang’s.  But I’ll have something up here tomorrow, before I head home.  I’ll answer yesterday’s comments and as many as I can of today’s during the game.

Rational, reasonable comments are always welcome!

The Blue Jays kept their run of strong spring pitching alive by coming to the Happiest Place on Earth and shutting out the Braves behind strong performances from Ricky Romero, Dana Eveland, Sean Henn and Ray Gonzalez.

Gonzalez, by the way, is the former Reidier Gonzalez  - but no one can pronounce his name and everyone has always just called him Ray, so he decided to make the change official this spring.

Romero got it started with four innings of two-hitter, though he walked four and threw more balls (30) than strikes (29).  He pitched out of trouble three times by getting ground ball double plays, in on two of which Mike McCoy was at shortstop making nice feeds to second from difficult angles.

Romero had trouble with the blusteriness of the day - he mentioned that he felt a couple of times as though he was being blown around on the mound, even though he probably wasn’t - and he couldn’t get his pitches to behave.  He mentioned that had he been having a similar day last year, he would have just folded up and accepted a beating, but he has learned over the past year to slow things down and search for something that’s working, which he did today.  In nine spring innings, Romero has given up one run.  Jose Molina caught him in a game for the first time today, and raved about his change-up - the one several hitters compared to Johan Santana’s a year ago.

I didn’t get to see Eveland pitch outside his first inning of work, when he gave up a single on what should have been a fly out (the ball was misplayed by Eric Thames).  He then gave up a couple of deep fly balls that went for outs - but it was really windy - and struck out Nate McLouth.  Eveland has been terrific all spring, but he’s still highly unlikely to make the team.  He is, however, a far, far better insurance policy at AAA than what the Jays had last year, when injuries forced them to use guys like Robert Ray, Brad Mills and Brett Cecil far before their times, as well as the lamentable Brian Burres for whom, one could argue,  there really never ought to have been a time.

I was impressed by McCoy at shortstop today.  I mentioned above the difficult feeds he made to second on double-play turns.  Two were from the area between the mound and second base as he’d had to run in to snare the grounder.  Both feeds were perfect, and he also made a nice throw on a good double play turn.  The bad news is that he was thrown out by a mile trying to steal third with nobody out in the first inning.  It’s the second time he’s been caught stealing this spring, and neither time was it especially close.  He hasn’t been successful yet.  The good news is that his 2-for-4 day actually lowered his spring average - all the way to .615.

I spoke to Eric Hinske before the game - it’s always good to catch up with him, he’s a really nice guy and has always had time for me no matter what uniform he’s been wearing.  I wonder how much of a chance he’ll get to play in Atlanta - could he potentially steal playing time from Melky Cabrera, moving into a left-field platoon with Matt Diaz?  The Braves could certainly do worse.  Hinske has always been able to hit right-handed pitching.  We didn’t discuss his new tattoo in great detail, because he said that’s been all anyone has wanted to talk to him about this spring and he’s tired of it already.  One could say that he should probably not be surprised that it would be such a conversation piece, but I didn’t want to get into that.

I also spoke to Terry Pendleton, and if there’s time on the post-game tomorrow we’ll play that interview for you.  It’s not his fault that he stole the 1991 NL MVP from Barry Bonds, so we didn’t get into that.  One of the interesting things he did mention was that he felt that his Braves were always better than any of their playoff opposition over all those years - with the exception of the 1992 Blue Jays.

Tonight is the last night of my 30s, and I’ll be spending it tooling around Orlando trying to figure out what to do while I wait to pick my wife up from the airport out here.

Tomorrow, I’ll start my 40s by getting a hour’s less sleep (awesome) and then heading out to the Bobby Mattick to watch Dustin McGowan throw his second simulated game of the spring.  Three “innings” and 45 pitches this time, and if he emerges unscathed yet again, the next stop should be a Grapefruit League game.  After that, it’s off to Dunedin Stadium to see if Brandon Morrow can maintain this lovely ability to throw strikes he seems recently to have discovered.  He has only issued one walk so far in four spring innings.  If he keeps that up, he could be lethal.

March 14th could well wind up being a huge good news day for the Blue Jays.

Today, we had a very brief edition of The JaysTalk - here it is, for your listening pleasure:

Download audio file (jaystalk-mw-20100313.mp3)

Tomorrow, we will have at least an hour to JaysTalk it up, and likely more, so make sure to get your dialing fingers ready!

Rational, reasonable comments are always welcome.

I was surprised enough that the Jays got their game in against the Rays yesterday amid the threatening conditions, but there seemed no way that they’d be able to play today.  It was pouring when I got up, pouring when I got to the ballpark, and pouring when I did a hit with Mike Hogan at about 10:30.  But at about 11:15, the rain stopped and the sky brightened.

Even though the bullpens were flooded, the field has really good drainage and there was very little standing water on the warning track.  The tarp came off and it appeared as though the optimism on the part of the Jays’ P.R. staff that I had earlier mocked might not have been so badly misplaced.  Until about five minutes to one.  Then it got ridiculous again and they finally called the whole thing off just before the rescheduled 1:30 start time.

Brian Tallet, who was scheduled to start (in order to line him up in the 5th starter’s spot, for the April 11th start at Baltimore), went under cover and threw a simulated game to get his innings in.

So, in an overall sense, not much got accomplished today.

Yesterday, though, Shaun Marcum was brilliant again in throwing three innings of one-hit shutout at the Rays.  No one seems surprised with how comfortable Marcum looks, but pitching coach Bruce Walton told me that he’s surprised at how good Marcum’s command has been so early on.  The man they call “Pappy” says that there are two things for which one looks from a pitcher who is coming back from serious injury - the first is the arm.  The angle, the release point, how the ball is coming out, whether he can repeat his delivery.  The second is command.  Marcum has passed both those tests with flying colours.

I also spoke to Joey Gathright yesterday, and he told me that he’d had a talk with Cito Gaston about what he’d have to do to make the team.  He was reluctant to share details, but he said that if he has the spring he should have, he’ll be there.  For that reason, and just the general sense I’m getting around camp, I’m thinking that the plan may very well be to have Gathright be the left fielder and (hopefully) ninth-place hitter, at least to start the season, while Travis Snider goes back down to AAA to tear it up.

I would love to see Snider in the line-up everyday, in a position of importance, with a chance to make a difference.  But if he’s only going to play against righties and bat 9th when he does, I’d rather he be in Vegas and Gathright be up with the big club.

Something else interesting came out of that conversation with Gathright, too.  He said that last year, he finally realized what kind of hitter he is, that he just has to get on base in order to be effective.  He’s now really trying to use the bunt as a weapon, and says he might try to bunt for a hit twice a game once the season starts.  He has been trying to bunt for hits almost that often so far in the Grapefruit schedule, but still has to refine his ability.  He gets it past the pitcher, which is great, but often bunts it too hard past the pitcher, and the second baseman has been able to throw him out.

Wandering around the clubhouse as we worked our way towards the inevitable rainout today, I talked to Mike McCoy and Brett Wallace in order to set up interviews that we’ll use this weekend during the broadcasts.  I have loved Wallace’s swing - his bat speed is tremendous - though he hasn’t had much success yet this spring.  McCoy is a guy who values on-base and who has great speed.  He thinks that if he plays his game he could eventually work his way into the line-up at shortstop, and so do I.

The thing that sucks the most about today’s rainout is that I was going to get the opportunity to call four innings, and it was more than likely my last play-by-play opportunity of the year.  It’s the last mlb.com game for which I’ll be down here, and I was really looking forward to it.

I’ll take my more-familiar spot next to Jerry and Alan for the weekend over-the-air games against the Braves - they’re playing a home-and-home starting with tomorrow’s affair at Disneyworld. The JaysTalk will be back this weekend, as well.  Saturday’s edition might be quick, because of the Marlies game, but Sunday’s will be at least a full hour long, so get those dialing fingers ready.  We JaysTalked it up last weekend, too, though I don’t know how many people knew it was happening Sunday because we joined in progress after the Raptors’ game and stuff, so it wasn’t all that busy.  Here, however, for your listening pleasure, is last Saturday’s edition of The JaysTalk:

Download audio file (jaystalk-mw-20100307.mp3)

Rational, reasonable comments are always welcome!

It was a day like no other….except, well, for other days that have a “B” game that’s significant enough to go watch as well as an “A” game later on.

I had to go to the “B” game, which I thought was going to be at the Bobby Mattick complex in Dunedin, but turned out to be at Bright House Networks Field in Clearwater.  Luckily, they’re only about 10 minutes away from each other, but between going to the wrong park first, then going to the Phils’ minor-league complex looking for the game before finding out it was at the main stadium, I missed the first two innings and so didn’t see Brandon Morrow pitch at all.  I also called him Brendan Morrow on the radio twice, which I was pretty sure I would be able to avoid doing.  As they say, nertz.

We were all surprised that Morrow only worked two innings, throwing 32 pitches, because the expectation was that having done that last time, he’d be on a 45-pitch limit this time.  As he explained afterwards, though, his outing was shortened because he’s coming back to start Sunday on three days’ rest, because the team is setting up the rotation for the season.

Extrapolating from that comment, it means that Morrow will be set to pitch on April 8th, in the third game of the season.  Shaun Marcum, who is scheduled to pitch tomorrow, is on target to pitch Opening Day.  Ricky Romero will slot between the two of them.  Marc Rzepczynski, who threw three innings in relief of Morrow today, ought to be starting next on Monday, on four days’ rest, which sets him up for the fourth game of the season - the Orioles’ home opener.  Brian Tallet is the likely fifth starter.

Morrow told me that he put his change-up to great use today, getting a strikeout and almost every out on a ball in play with it.  Alan Ashby will be happy about that, since the change-up is his favourite pitch.  It’s an incredible weapon, especially for a power pitcher, and Morrow realizes it.  He also said that he worked awfully hard on his control while he was in Tacoma last season, and he has carried that work over into this spring, which is why he’s not surprised that he has only walked one batter over his two outings.  If this guy has figured out how to throw strikes, he has the ability to seriously dominate.

Rzepczynski started off poorly, giving up a leadoff gapper to Tuffy Gosewisch (seriously), then drilling Tyson Gillies in the head.   The next hitter was Quintin Berry, and he hit a routine grounder to first, but either he’s really fast or Zep didn’t get over quickly enough, because all of a sudden the bases were loaded with nobody out.  From there, though, Rzepczynski settled right down.  He got a grounder to first from DeWayne Wise - Brett Wallace should have gone home for the force, but he tried to start a double play, unaware (so sayeth Cito) that Wise was going to be nearly impossible to double up.  Gaston said Wallace was spoken to after the play, and made aware that he has to know who he’s playing with and who he’s playing against.  A run scored on the play, then Zep retired the next eight hitters he faced - five by strikeout.  After a 30-pitch first inning, he salvaged the outing needing only 49 pitches to throw three complete innings.

Brett Cecil followed, in his first outing of the spring.  He’d been set back because he cut his right thumb “chopping up chickens”.  He wasn’t allowed to throw any breaking stuff, just fastballs and change-ups, and with two on and nobody out in his first inning of work, he threw Cody Ransom a first-pitch change on which Ransom looked completely baffled.  Cecil came back with a fastball, and Ransom hit it over the tiki bar beyond the left field stands.  After that wake-up call, Cecil looked pretty good, giving up one solid single and a bunt single over the next two innings, striking out four.

I spent most of the “A” game talking to Cecil and Rzepczynski, and later Kyle Drabek, so my vantage point on Drabek’s outing was the right-field corner, not the best place to judge what’s supposed to be an awesome 12-to-6 curveball to go with his mid-90s heat.  He looked pretty good to me, though, and I don’t think I’ll get to see him pitch again before I go home, but after the game Cito said that he doesn’t think Drabek is far from the big leagues at all, that there’s a chance we might see him this year.  I don’t expect that to happen, but he could force his way into the picture if he excels in the minors.

Jose Bautista hit another homer, and it was another mammoth blast, and J.P. Arencibia missed one of his own by a few feet - he likely would have had a double had DeWayne Wise not made a spectacular circus catch on the warning track.  Mike McCoy got some work in centrefield, showing his versatility as he bids to make the team.  And Aaron Hill walked again.  What’s up with that guy?

Tomorrow, thunderstorms are expected in Port Charlotte, where the Jays are scheduled to face a split squad of Tampa Bay Rays.  If they play, Marcum gets his second start of the spring, set for three innings and 45 pitches.  Arencibia, Brett Wallace and Randy Ruiz, among others will also be making the trip, as will Brad Mills, who gets his first real chance to throw his cap into the battle for the rotation.  Mills threw in a “B” game last week and Cito said afterwards that he looked even better than he did last spring, when Mills was a favourite to go north right up until the last week of camp.

Rational, reasonable comments are always welcome - barring a rainout, I promise I’ll get to the backlog tomorrow!

Today was an off-day in Blue Jay-land, save for A.J. Jimenez, Darin Mastroianni, Kenny Wilson, Jake Marisnick and KC Hobson.  As well as Alex Anthopoulos, Tony LaCava, Mel Didier, Cito Gaston, Bruce Walton, Nick Leyva, George Poulis and Jon Lalonde.  Oh, and some right-handed pitcher.

Dustin McGowan, of course, was the reason that everybody was at the Bobby Mattick complex on a day off, pitching in a “game” for the first time since July of 2008.  McGowan is trying to come back from surgery to debride his labrum and repair a torn rotator cuff, and he has hit several bumps along the way (including having to have knee surgery last July).  His diabetes doesn’t help the situation, either, slowing the overall healing process, and the outlook was so grim not even six months ago that the word was McGowan would be lucky to ever pitch in the majors again.

That’s not the word anymore.

McGowan threw a two “inning”, 30-pitch simulated game, facing a total of seven hitters and throwing 15 balls and 15 strikes.  It was a controlled environment, which meant that he was only going to throw 15 pitches, regardless of the result, then sit down for about seven minutes (with NO entertainment for the gathered assemblage in the interim - harumph), then throw another 15 pitches.  As a result, only three outs were recorded, and two at-bats were left unresolved.  Time of the game was 17 minutes.

McGowan pitched to a full count on Mastroianni, the first batter he faced, and Mastroianni then just walked back to the dugout.  Wilson followed and inside-outed a 2-1 pitch the other way for what would have been a clean single to left had there been anybody on the field behind McGowan.  With a runner “on” (Wilson was actually sitting in the dugout), McGowan went to the stretch and got what would have been a slow groundout to third from Marisnick on a 1-1 pitch.  He then got ahead of Hobson 1-2, at which point the first inning ended.

In the second, Dave Stieb went out to play second base.

Hobson led off the second, and McGowan struck him out swinging on four pitches, then got ahead of Marisnick with a really nice first-pitch curveball (I think- might have been a slider), but followed with four straight balls.  Pitching from the stretch again, McGowan ran the count full to Wilson, then struck him out looking to end the inning.

The Jays didn’t have a radar gun on McGowan, doctor’s orders and all, so all of us assembled reporters decided that McGowan’s fastball was sitting somewhere between 87 and 103 miles an hour.

Really, though, the results don’t matter.  I only threw them in there because I thought you might like to know.  What does matter is the fact that McGowan looked good and felt better.  There were smiles all over after the “game” was over - McGowan saying he was thrilled and felt great, Alex Anthopoulos saying that if McGowan continued to be pain-free and to go out and throw like he did today, there was no reason to think that he wouldn’t be able to be a significant contributor this season.

If McGowan is still pain-free tomorrow and Thursday, he’ll throw another simulated game on Sunday or Monday, and if all goes well then, he’ll start getting into some Grapefruit League games.

Obviously, this is fantastic news for the Blue Jays - a healthy, back-to-normal McGowan gives the Jays two potential top-of-the-rotation guys (along with Brandon Morrow), and he’s still young, turning 28 in two weeks.  McGowan’s being out of options is a problem for the Jays, which is why he’ll likely start the season on the disabled list while he continues to get stretched out, either in Vegas or in extended spring.    Again, though, this is like found money for the Jays, who expected nothing from McGowan and might now have themselves another strong rotation piece for a few years to come.

It’s obviously very early, and setbacks are always possible, especially for a guy who has seemingly had so many over the past couple of years, but it’s awfully hard not to be optimistic right about now.

Also, I should mention that I ran into Sal Fasano between innings.  He’ll be managing the Jays’ low-A affiliate in Lansing, Michigan as he starts what’s likely to be a very successful coaching career that I’m assuming will get him to the big leagues in the next few years.  It was great to see him, his young son (who needed open-heart surgery twice as a newborn) is doing very, very well, which is incredible news.  I’m a huge Fasano fan, one of my all-time favourite people I have met in this gig, and wish him nothing but the best.  I’m really hoping he winds up on the Jays’ big-league coaching staff when the post-Cito era begins in October.

Tomorrow - a morning “B” game against the Phillies features work from Morrow and probably Brett Cecil as well, making his first appearance of the spring.  Then the real fake game at Dunedin Stadium, Lance Broadway will start for the Jays because, ummm, yeah.

Rational, reasonable comments are always welcome!

I know I promised to provide you with daily updates in this space in the last post (which was what, Thursday?), but the dire combination of failing hotel internet service and the Fat Elvis sim league auction this past weekend held me back, sorry about that.  By the way, I got killed in that auction - Brian Buscher and Chris Duncan are my first basemen.  Dig me.

Anyway, I have seen the Blue Jays play four spring games so far, and I have only seen one starting pitcher give up a run, so that’s something.  In the win over the Astros today, Ricky Romero was fantastic.  Returning to the spot where he secured his place in the 2009 starting rotation, Romero flummoxed an Astros team that started six regulars.  He said he had the best sinker he’s had in a while, and he used it to great effect, inducing ground balls from 10 of the 13 hitters he faced, while striking out two more.  Brad Arnsberg, now the Astros’ pitching coach, told me afterwards that hitters came back shaking their heads at Romero’s amazing splitter, and Arnie laughed and told them it was a straight change, it’s just that good.

Romero definitely fell flat in  the second half of last season, but it’s not that long ago that the one-time first-round bust was drawing favourable comparisons to Johan Santana.  I still don’t think I see him ahead of Brandon Morrow and Shaun Marcum on the effectiveness spectrum, or even Dustin McGowan if he’s healthy (simulated game tomorrow morning!), but Romero is carrying himself differently this spring, the confidence on which Arnsberg worked so hard last season is there now, and it will serve him well.  Romero himself is even preaching confidence and belief in oneself to some of the younger pitchers in camp, and when the talent is there, that’s often the difference.

I have seen J.P. Arencibia play in two games so far, and I have seen him hit two mammoth home runs.  That bodes well.  Arencibia had laser eye surgery in the off-season (after he had his kidneys fixed up - see Bastian’s story today), improving his vision from 20/50 to 20/15.  He’s a confident kid, not down at all on his season last year.  He feels that even though he only hit .236/.284/.444 in Vegas, his 21 homers and 75 RBIs show that he was still productive.  Even if he homers in every Grapefruit League game in which he plays - and he has so far - he’s still not going to make the team, but he’s leaving a very strong impression, and that all-star breakish call-up that going into this year didn’t look like it was going to happen now very well might.

I have seen Jose Bautista, Aaron Hill, Randy Ruiz, Vernon Wells and Lyle Overbay look very good so far.  Granted, it’s stupid early, but it’s better to look good than not.  I still don’t understand why the way has been paved for Bautista to have an everyday job, but they can’t find a spot to give Ruiz a legitimate chance to play.  Ruiz is older and far weaker defensively, but he’s had nothing but success as a major-league hitter. Bautista has had many years of mediocre offensive production in the big leagues.

I got to see Brett Wallace play for the first time today, and I saw massive thighs and an incredibly quick swing.  Alex Anthopoulos told me that in last year’s Futures Game, Wallace faced Neftali Feliz and fouled off pitch after pitch after pitch before working a walk, which is awfully impressive, especially when you consider that Feliz had a 0.68 WHIP in the majors last season with 39 strikeouts in 31 innings.  The quick swing showed itself today as well, with Wallace fouling off a few two-strike pitches in each of his first two at-bats, but he wound up 0-for-3 with a strikeout, a pop foul and a groundout.  He’ll get more work over the next week and a bit, but he’ll likely be in the first round of cuts so that he can get to work with his Las Vegas teammates, hopeful of a call-up to the bigs this year.

Wallace, Travis Snider and Adam Lind will form the backbone of the offense when the Jays get good again, which could be sooner than a lot of people seem to think.  The thing I have seen more than anything else, which I already knew when I got here, was that there is a serious abundance of talent here.  From the pitching, with Marcum, Romero, Morrow, Rzepczynski, Cecil, Stewart, Jenkins, Farquhar and more, to that core of young hitters.  This is a team that could wind up being very good in the near future.

I should mention that it was great to catch up with Brad Arnsberg, one of the reasons I was really looking forward to this trip to Kissimmee (it certainly wasn’t the ride down 192, with its seemingly-unending stretch of fast food joints, cheap hotels, 7-11s and souvenir shops).  Arnie was a real treat to deal with while he was the Jays’ pitching coach, always generous with his time, always happy to talk pitching, and always putting himself in the background while shoving his charges to the forefront.  He’s a lot happier now in Houston and hey, he’s got Gustavo Chacin back!  And good luck to him with that.  I wish Arnsberg nothing but success, he’s good people and was terrific to me, without question.

Speaking of Chacin, he worked the 6th inning today, and it was nice to see that little herky-jerky motion again.  It brought back a lot of memories of a guy who always took pride in doing his job and keeping the ball down in the zone.  Chacin gave up a mammoth double to Jorge Padilla - the first batter he saw - and after getting Snider to ground to first (advancing the runner), John McDonald hit a soft liner to shallow centre with the infield in to drive in the run.

Tomorrow - Dustin McGowan’s simulated game!

Rational, reasonable comments are always welcome.

I have spent a couple of days at home, taking it easy, spending time with my kids, and just generally giving myself time to breathe after three very intense weeks in Whistler, and since I’m off to Spring Training tonight to get back into baseball mode, I figured I’d better put up a post now before getting back into the daily grind.

I hope you all haven’t missed me too much, but moreso I hope you haven’t forgotten about this space - it’s going to be full of information, opinion and analysis on a regular basis once again from hereon out.

Before a look ahead to baseball season, though, a look back at what transpired over the last three weeks, since I wasn’t really able to share any of it with you while it was going on.

I’m not sure what it was like in Vancouver, though the pictures and video that I saw certainly showed a city that was awash in Olympic fever, but Whistler was something else.  A phenomenal experience, in a tiny village that really had nothing going on but for the Winter Games.  Every time one walked the village stroll, there were dozens of people in distinct, colourful national team jackets (some nicely understated, like Norway, some incredibly garish, like Ukraine), it really felt like the whole world was there - well, except for the warm-weather countries and stuff - and just there to enjoy.  The streets were crawling with cops and mounties at all times, but they all had smiles on their faces.

When I got to Whistler I took a couple of days to get the lay of the land, and in the two days prior to the Opening Ceremonies, wound up walking one kilometre pretty much straight up to get to the “timing flats” - the finish area of the ski course at Creekside, where most of the alpine events took place.  On the walk down the mountain, I tweaked my back a bit, and that would stick with me for the entirety of the Games, unfortunately.

I also visited the Sliding Centre, where the luge, skeleton and bobsleigh events went down.  I happened to be there while some luge practice was going on, and I saw five sliders go down the track - the last of whom went head over heels in a spectacular crash in turn 16 (Thunderbird, I think).  I caught the crash on video, and I thought it was pretty cool - he walked away unhurt - until the next day, of course, when I was back at the Sliding Centre to cover the aftermath of the death of Nodar Kumaritashvili.

When you get an assignment like this, you’re always told to expect the unexpected, but nowhere on that list of unexpected was an athlete dying in a training accident.  It was awful to stand up on the scaffolding looking down on the spot where Kumaritashvili hit that square metal pole that, the next day, was covered with “for-show” padding - as though that would have helped when a human being hit it going 140 kilometres an hour.

Very obviously, Kumaritashvili’s death cast a huge pall over the entire Games, and I was glad to see that he was acknowledged in the closing ceremonies.  There was also a shrine constructed in his memory right beside the Whistler medals plaza.

I do think that the International Luge Federation really overreacted by changing the start heights of all the races.  I mean, I’m no expert, but there wasn’t a single athlete or coach I spoke to who wasn’t furious about it - Canadian or otherwise.  It’s amazing how reactive society in general has become, and FIL just followed suit.  The first deadly accident in 35 years and such drastic steps were taken, more to show that they were doing something than anything else.  I attended the news conference the next day to hear the President of FIL, Josef Fendt, say that the track was safe and he had no concerns at all, but that the start heights were moving down.  He had no issue with sliders being able to reach speeds of over 150 km/h, but no track being constructed from this point on would allow sliders to reach speeds over 135 km/h.  It was amazing to watch, and hard not to laugh.  Of course, given the events of the previous 24 hours, that would have been unseemly.

I had never seen a luge race prior to the Olympics, and I still feel as though I have never seen a world-class level race.  I mean, the women’s and doubles’ events started at the junior start - the same place you or I would start at the end of our first two-hour luge lesson if we just stopped by the track on some random day.

The first week of the Olympics was a bit of a train wreck, but first weeks of Olympics generally are.  No one involved who run the thing has ever done anything like it before, and they have a hard time hitting the ground running.  It seemed at the time - to me, anyway - that the whole “Own The Podium” thing was really taking a toll on the Canadian athletes.  I spoke to at least three of them who said that they were going for the gold and only the gold - if they weren’t going to win, they were going to finish 20th.  That attitude probably helped Canada score those best-ever 14 golds, once things got rolling, but it’s likely also reflected in the lack of silvers and bronzes.

The weather was a major issue, but there’s nothing anyone can do about that.  It’s just a shame that VANOC took so much heat for having to cancel all those standing-room tickets at Cypress because the warmth had made the ground so unstable - but then, why would they make a standing room area in a place that was prone to mudslides if the weather was too warm?  I didn’t have to worry about that, though, my life revolved only around Whistler Creekside and the Whistler Sliding Centre, except for those two days that I made it out to Whistler Olympic Park (hilarious because all the signage used acronyms - Creekside was WCR, the Sliding Centre was WSC and Olympic Park was, of course, WOP).

Every day was spent running to various events, standing around in Media Mixed Zones where I had to sharpen up my elbows to get space between hordes of rampaging Germans and Austrians (I don’t know why, but they were generally the ones by whom I found myself surrounded), and waiting to speak to athletes.  I wound up talking to almost every single Canadian athlete and every single medalist at the events I covered, which included all the luge, skeleton and bobsleigh, the men’s and women’s downhill and Super-G’s, the first runs of each of the men’s and women’s slaloms, men’s super combined, women’s giant slalom, women’s 4 x 5km cross-country relay and men’s 50km cross-country race.  I think that’s it, there might have been another alpine race or two in there.

I got to see Canadians win four medals - Jon Montgomery’s gold in men’s skeleton, Lyndon Rush, Lascelles Brown, Dave Bissett and Chris LeBihan’s bronze (by one one-hundredth of a second!) in four-man bobsleigh and the fantastic gold-silver combo in women’s bobsleigh, with Kaillie Humphries and Heather Moyse atop the podium and Helen Upperton and Shelley-Anne Brown grabbing silver.

Montgomery’s victory stands out the most, seeing how it was the first (and I thought for a while, only) Canadian gold medal that I’d seen.  Also, it came on the heels of Mellisa Hollingsworth’s fifth-place ride in women’s skeleton just a couple of hours before.

As Hollingsworth made her way to my position in the Mixed Zone, she wasn’t just teary-eyed, she was crying.  Tears were streaming down her face, she’d made one small mistake in one corner that caused her to hit the wall two turns later and took away all of her speed, dropping her from the silver medal position to well off the podium.  I felt awful for her, and was kind of the anti-Barbara Walters when I interviewed her.  I was trying to get her not to cry any more than she already was.

Then Montgomery came down the track, moving from the silver medal position to the gold in his last run, and it was awesome.

Any of you who have listened to or read me know that I’m big on not getting caught up in things and stressing the importance of a reporter not being a cheerleader or a hopeless optimist or whatever, but when Montgomery (or any Canadian, for that matter) was competing, that all went out the window.  Not on the air or anything - but I wasn’t broadcasting any events live - but certainly for me at the event.  I celebrated the Canadian medals, though hardly to the extent that most of the foreign media celebrated their athletes’.  Mine was more like a swift punch to the shoulder of Jermain Franklin or Roger Millions, whichever one was around at the time, coupled with a big smile and a “THAT is about which that I am talking!”

And I don’t have a problem with that.  This isn’t a case of cheering for laundry, for people who are being paid to represent, say, a city with which they would otherwise have nothing to do.  This is about people competing for THEIR country, on behalf of their fellow citizens.  Competing for MY country.  It doesn’t mean that only positive stories should be reported, it doesn’t mean that poor performances should be overlooked, it doesn’t mean that legitimate negative angles should be ignored.  But it does mean that achievement can be celebrated.

I’m hoping I remember everything I experienced over my three weeks in Whistler, but some of it has already faded.  There are plenty of things that will always stand out, though:

-Lyndon Rush, pilot of the bronze-medal winning Canada 1 four-man bobsled, is a huge JaysTalk fan.  Great guy as well, obviously, but in our first conversation he really lit up when he realized who I was, and he even threw a Roy Halladay reference into an answer.

-Shelley-Anne Brown, the Pickering native and brakeman of the silver-medal winning Canada 2 two-man women’s bobsled, describing her first bobsleigh run as “doing a 50-foot sprint and then jumping into a clothes dryer.”

-Forgetting how to pronounce former gold medal cross-country skier Chandra Crawford’s first name only seconds after I confirmed the pronunciation with her, then using my fabled “I’ve had eight concussions” excuse.

-Interviewing Hollingsworth, Manuel Osborne-Paradis, Robbie Dixon, Emily Brydon, Alex Gough and Devon Kershaw, all with tears in their eyes over their disappointing results - in Kershaw’s case, despite the fact that he had just recorded the best-ever Canadian result in his discipline by a ton.

-The thrilling finishes to men’s skeleton and the 50K cross-country race.

-Spending seven bucks for a box of cereal at the IGA in Whistler.

There’s so much more that I could go through - the sheer, unadulterated beauty of Whistler, standing in the snow for hours on end waiting for athletes to come by, interviewing Lindsey Vonn in a two-on-one scrum with Access Hollywood, the air, the mountains, the views, attending concerts by Devo, The Roots and Blue Rodeo (how’s that for a musical smorgasbord?) and being in the middle of the Whistler Town Square for the overtime of the gold medal men’s hockey game.  Incredible experiences, all.  As well as this seemingly newfound Canadian pride and outward patriotism which I have been waiting to see my whole life.  I knew it was in there!

And now I get to go to Florida to discuss the merits of Jose Molina vs.  Raul Chavez and the incredulity of Travis Snider starting off another season hitting ninth.  Baseball is still the best, though!

Regular spring training coverage begins tomorrow - rational and reasonable comments are always welcome!

I have joined a whole big whack of The FAN’s crew out here in B.C. for some huge winter sporting event that’s going to get going later this week, so there won’t be a whole heck of a lot of bloggage coming from these quarters for the rest of this month.

There are all kinds of big, important rules surrounding these sorts of sporting get-togethers, and one of them is no blogging.  So, unless the Blue Jays make some big news (and I hear about it up here), this is going to be it until I get back home at the beginning of March.

I can tell you a few things about my first couple of days up here on the mountain, though.  First of all, this place is gorgeous.  It’s my first time in Whistler and the views are spectacular.  I look out the window of my condo and see the mountain.  The village is pretty cool, and in the first couple of hours of walking around here yesterday I saw groups of people wearing the uniforms of the Italian, French, Swiss, Polish, Russian and Croatian teams.  I’m directly across from the Swiss Broadcasting Centre and a minute’s walk from the Medal Plaza.  Here’s hoping, if the bosses don’t mind, that I’ll be able to trade some of the cool uniformy stuff they gave me before I left for some of the other countries’ cool uniformy stuff at the end of the month.

The drive up the Sea-To-Sky Highway was spectacular as well, especially the part where the bus driver told me (because I was sitting closest to the front, I assume), that I was going to have to navigate once we got into Whistler.  As I mentioned above, this is the first time I have ever been to Whistler.  That made the end of the bus ride kind of fun.

I managed to trek up to the finish area of the downhill today, and while I was walking up got a chance to see a bit of a staged mid-course helicopter rescue.  I didn’t get a great view, nor did I manage any pictures, so I’m not sure why I’m telling you this, except that it was kind of cool.

It’s awfully difficult to pin down this Whistler Village thing.  I figured I’d have the lay of the land by now, but I don’t. Oh, well, all that means is that there are a ton of things to do around here when there aren’t events on.  I doubt I’ll get to do much, though I do have event veterans Jeff Blair and Rob Faulds up here to show me the way.  Chances are my days will be vacuum-packed with sporting events to cover, no time to party.  Also, I think I’m going to try to stay, relatively, on East Coast time.  That way it’ll feel like I’m sleeping in until 11:00 every day!  Of course, it also means being in bed by 9:00 local.  We’ll see how long that lasts.

As far as baseball is concerned, I’m surprised that so many people seem to  have their shorts in a knot about guys like Kevin Gregg and Dana Eveland.  Gregg, as awful as he was at keeping the ball in the park last year, had a better WHIP than Jason Frasor in both 2007 and 2008.  He’s not that bad, and he came awfully, awfully cheap.  Eveland is another arm to throw onto the pile, and whether it means the Jays will have a decision at the end of Spring Training with too many guys who are out of options, or too many guys slated to pitch in Vegas, or a few guys they might have to send through waivers or release, then so be it.  They’ll have six weeks to get a good look at as many arms as they can, and anyone who has watched this team over the last few years knows that the Jays always need rather a plentiful supply of back-up arms.

And to clear up some confusion, both in these parts and others, David Purcey is NOT out of options going into this season.

Again, I apologize for what will be a distinct lack of bloggage in this space for the rest of the month.  I will try to answer comments as they come in, but I think I can only answer baseball-related stuff.  Winter sports and the like are pretty much off-limits - I don’t want to break any rules.

Zaun out, Kevin in - that’s the way it seems to be with the Jays all but set to announce the signing of former Marlins and Cubs closer Kevin Gregg to a one-year deal with a couple of team options.

It seems like Cito Gaston wasn’t kidding at the State of the Franchise when he kept referring to an additional closer candidate that Alex Anthopoulos might bring in.

Gregg will likely be the closer for the Blue Jays this year, and probably makes a trade of Jason Frasor or Scott Downs the team’s next move.

It’s really a win-win move here for both the Jays and “the player”.  As I’ve said many times, this coming season isn’t about winning, it’s about giving guys a chance to play, not blocking players who have a chance to make an impact down the road and about gathering assets.  Gregg is an asset.

No, he’s not a great closer, and there’s plenty of debate that he’s even a good one, but that’s OK.  He’s an established, durable guy with a good arm who is only costing the Blue Jays $2.75 million.  And he’s all but guaranteed to be a Type-B free agent next season.  So, at worst, the Jays just spent almost $3 million to secure themselves another top-40 pick in 2011.

At best, Gregg comes in and blows the doors off, Bryan Harvey-Marlins-style, and the Jays either reap the benefits on the trade market in late July or use the club options to their advantage on the trade market in the wintertime.

He’s not going to displace anyone who was guaranteed to be a successful reliever.  There’s still room for Frasor, Downs, Carlson, Tallet, Accardo and Roenicke.  Casey Janssen and Shawn Camp will be up against it now, barring a Frasor/Downs trade, and they’ll have to find room to squeeze in a Zech Zinicola.  Unfortunately, Hey Dirkhurst is no longer in the running - he’s having arthroscopic surgery on his shoulder on Friday, here’s hoping they don’t find a torn labrum or a major rotator cuff issue.

When you can get a guy like Gregg - whose numbers are kind of enigmatic - for less than three million bucks, you do it, even if the only reason is to turn him into a sandwich pick a year down the road.  If one of Carlos Delgado, Johnny Damon and Jermaine Dye would come that cheap, I’d be all over that, as well.

As far as those numbers are concerned, Gregg is one of the weird right-handed pitchers who tends to fare much better against left-handed hitters.  This can be a huge asset if it’s something of which the manager is aware and willing to utilize.  In 2009, lefties OPS’d .592 against Gregg, compared to righties’ .860.  In 2007, his first year as a closer, it was .514 for the lefties and .732 for the righties.  2008 was more even, with only a  67-point difference between the two sides, and he was actually better against righties.

His home runs allowed spiked last year, which you would think was natural since he went from working in a very pitcher-friendly ballpark in Florida to a very hitter-friendly one on the north side of Chicago, but the numbers don’t bear that out.  He actually did a very good job of keeping the ball in the park at Wrigley, but gave up nine homers in 32 innings of work on the road (three of them over an inning and a third in FLA).

Gregg’s road numbers were awful last year - a 7.59 ERA, 1.72 WHIP and a .906 OPS against.  He did have three terrible outings in which he gave up a combined nine runs in just two innings of work, but then he had an outing at home in which he gave up four runs without recording an out, and he wound up with a 2.21 ERA, .573 OPS and a WHIP under 1.00 at home, so that doesn’t exactly explain things.

Bottom line, this isn’t a guy riding in on a white horse to be the next great closer in Blue Jays history.  He might wind up being Joey McLaughlin or Randy Moffitt, but that’s about the point in the Blue Jays’ development at which we stand right now.  The great benefit to bringing in Gregg is his ability to bring back tasty stuff for the future, whether that comes when they trade him or when he leaves as a free agent, as well as what could potentially come in a Frasor or Downs trade, since Gregg’s arrival pushes that door open a little bit wider.

For a small investment, with what are sure to be team-friendly options, that’s a good deal.

Rational, reasonable comments are always welcome!