Blue Jays Morning Brew: Spring Training Pitching Schedule, Off-Season Thoughts and more

Feb 16, 2014; Dunedin, FL, USA; Toronto Blue Jays catcher Dioner Navarro (30) holds the bat during spring training at Florida Auto Exchange Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

The Toronto Blue Jays have released the rest of their early spring training pitching schedule and Bluebird Banter fills us in with tweets from Shi Davidi of Sportsnet and Mike Wilner of The Fan 590. Wednesday J.A. Happ, Todd Redmond and Kyle Drabek take the hill while R.A. Dickey, Esmil Rogers and Dustin McGowan go Thursday. Friday features Mark Buehrle and Brandon Morrow (hopefully) with Drew Hutchison, Ricky Romero and Marcus Stroman slotted for Saturday. Casey Janssen is expected to pitch Sunday.

I promise this will be the last time on this site you will read about the comments made by Scott Boras over the weekend but I’d be doing you a disservice if I didn’t link to Andrew Stoeten’s excellent piece at DJF. It’s easy to discredit Boras as a self-serving prick, which he probably is, but it shouldn’t take away from the accuracy of his harsh words for the Jays.

Ian Hunter at The Blue Jay Hunter reacts to the Jays’ passive off-season. Ian drops some great lines throughout the piece but this one I thought really hit the nail on the head.

"It’s almost as if we’ve gone back in time three or four years and expectations have reverted back to simply finishing with a .500 record. After they failed to live up to expectations last year, it’s like the Blue Jays are perfectly content remaining the little brother of the AL East."

Ricky Romero smiled. He’s also been focusing on making his delivery faster while keeping it under control shares Ken Fidlin of the Toronto Sun. Romero has been a bit wild during his bullpen sessions but apparently looked better during his first live batting practice, which he proclaimed “successful”. I’m hardly holding on to hope that he will ever pitch effectively (or at all) for the Blue Jays again but at this point, it’s hard not to root for Romero.

Blue Jays’ relief pitcher breaks down his delivery in pictures with Shi Davidi of Sportsnet. It’s fascinating stuff and I wouldn’t complain one bit if more of this type of content kept flowing out of the SN offices.

John Lott of the National Post writes about the new experimental rules implemented by MLB regarding home plate collisions. New Blue Jays’ catcher Dioner Navarro sounds concerned he’ll be able to learn the “right” way to play the position and worries he’ll have to play the position “like a shortstop”. Remember, this is the man who (allegedly) made a full Portillo’s order to his third base coach before scoring on a double from first base.