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Blue Jays Podcast (VIDEO): Daniel Norris & Dwight Smith Jr

By Shaun Doyle

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Our 20th episode of Jays’ Nest was a beauty! We have been proud of the Blue Jays talk we’ve been able to put together for our readers/ listeners for months now. To celebrate this milestone episode, we brought in some help to join our party. We were lucky enough to steal some time from Daniel Norris and Dwight Smith Jr. For Norris, it was his first appearance on our show. Dwight returned for his 2nd. Both were a lot of fun.

We are able to do this every week because we’ve had great support from our readers and listeners. Thank you. Remember, to catch all of our episodes, you can find us on Stitcher (for Android) and iTunes. If you’d rather watch our show, check us out on YouTube. If you like what you hear, please be so kind as to give us a good rating. Thanks! As always, you can tune in live on Google Hangouts to interact with our panel with questions, etc during our LIVE broadcast. We would also love to respond to your questions/ comments on air. You can submit them to @JaysNestPodcast or to JaysNestPodcast@gmail.com.

To start off our show, we talked about the fallout from a piece I put up a few days back. In it, I discuss that there are several reasons that this 2015 season should not be written off. I listed several reason why it is not all bad. This sparked a lot of discussion in the comment section, but it led to some great talk for our show. We talked about the need for picking up pitching help. And, while a guy like Cole Hamels or Johnny Cueto might be huge, there are other, more realistic options out there.

Perhaps, one pitching boost the Blue Jays could benefit from is the return of Daniel Norris. We caught up with Norris the morning after a start. We asked him about what he’s been working on since he started his time in AAA Buffalo. He talked about consistency and the value of working with Randy St Claire. As well, we also talked to Norris about some other things that weren’t really baseball related. We asked him for tips for growing a beard and about his photography.

As well, we asked him to touch on a message that his sister, Melanie has discussed about chasing your dreams. In her TEDx Talk, Melanie, an artist discusses the importance of pursuing your dream as opposed to catching it. Daniel talked to us about his sister and how that message relates to him as a pitcher. There was lots of good discussion with Norris, including him giving advice to my 9 year old son who is also a left handed pitcher. 

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But, we weren’t done there, we also welcomed Dwight Smith back to our show. He talked about his time in AA New Hampshire thus far, where he has found success in surprising situations. Being a lefty bat, you would think that he would struggle against same handed pitching. Not so. As well, we wondered about his ability to hit in the clutch. Among other things, Dwight told us about a name to watch for from the AA squad. He mentioned Jorge Flores.

When asked about his game day routine, Dwight lamented that there was no Chick Fil A near him, so he’s taken to a meatball marinara from Subway. Keegan pointed out to him that a Chick Fil A opened up in Toronto last year. So if he needed that little bit of extra motivation to work for a promotion, we provided it. Near the end of our conversation, Dwight addresses those who may doubt his ability to hit for power at the big league level.

To wrap up the show we ran down our weekly  Pitcher of the Week and Hitter of the Week awards.

It was a great way to spend our 20th episode. We hope you enjoy the podcast as much as we enjoy making it.

AUDIO:


Jays’ Nest- Jays Journal- Podcast about Toronto Blue Jays – Jays’ Nest #20- Daniel Norris & Dwight Smith Jr

VIDEO: