Blue Jays Morning Brew: Back to the Big O, the Blue Jays will go in spring 2015

It’s been a rather light 24-hour news cycle for the Toronto Blue Jays, with the big update yesterday being that right-handed reliever Neil Wagner met with Dr. James Andrews and will undergo Tommy John surgery next week.

It’s especially unfortunate that Wagner was on the minor league disabled list when the injury occurred as Gregor Chisholm of MLB.com points out on Twitter. If Wagner would have been on the major league active roster instead of on option to Triple-A Buffalo when he was sent to the disabled list, he would have earned a major league salary and accrued service time during his DL stint.

Here are your other Blue Jays news and rumours:

Toronto Blue Jays baseball will return to the Big O in Montreal next spring as Shi Davidi of Sportsnet confirmed an earlier report from Jeremy Filosa of 98.5 FM in Montreal. Davidi writes that an opponent has not yet been confirmed but Filosa says that Joey Votto and the Cincinnati Reds are being courted to come take part in the event.

Mike Harrington of the Buffalo News shares video of Edwin Encarnacion taking batting practice before the Bisons game yesterday. As Eric Elliott recapped for us this morning, Encarnacion returned with a bang as he hit a grand slam in his first rehab game since suffering a quad injury just over a month ago.

38 years ago yesterday, the Toronto Blue Jays team name was born. Sasha Kalra of Sportsnet shares a few fan submissions from the “name the team” contest from that year, which included the Antelopes, Wildcats, Sea Fleas, Beavers and of course, the Blue Balls.

Brendan Kennedy of the Toronto Star examines J.A. Happ‘s recent success, specifically with fastballs up in the zone. As Kennedy writes, Happ used the high heater often early in his career but had gotten away from the pitch a bit more in recent years.

In a post I should have linked to earlier over at Blue Jays From Away, Shaun Doyle takes issue with the Jays’ decision to stand pat at the non-waiver trade deadline and makes an interesting point about potential “AA tax” that could come from kicking too many tires.

And closing out for today, Charlie Caskey at Your Van C’s looks at Blue Jays prospects who are either rising, ballooning, dropping or becoming dead weight.