Blue Jays Morning Brew: Two weeks remaining

With two weeks standing between the Toronto Blue Jays and real, live baseball, we round up the stories you need to read on this Sunday morning

Two more weeks.

On Sunday, April 3rd at 4:05 Eastern Time, Chris Archer will take the bump in Tampa, play with his his hair while look curiously to the skies, then drive in a fastball on Kevin Pillar for the first pitch of the Toronto Blue Jays 2016 baseball season. Finally.

Rosters are now being trimmed down to the more necessary pieces, so these coming days (leading up to the excellent exhibition series in Montreal) will be about fine tuning. As it stands, both the fourth outfield and fifth starting jobs are available.

With that in mind, here are the articles to kickstart your Sunday.

Bautista speaks on negotiations  –  After some time spent doing the opposite, Jose Bautista seems to be downplaying the magnitude of the ongoing negotiations with himself and fellow countryman Edwin Encarnacion.

“It’s not a difficult spring, I haven’t forgotten how to play baseball,” Bautista told Bob Elliot of the Toronto Sun. “I know what I can do, I know how I feel. I’m not worried. Neither is Edwin.”

There’s another interesting observation in the article, too. Elliot was first to report that the Jays offered Encarnacion a two-year deal and now adds that the organization did not include a dollar figure, instead asking Encarnacion’s camp to submit a starting point. Submitting a dollar figure is exactly what (briefly) turned a large group of Jays fans against Bautista.

Latin presence  –  Over at Jays From the Couch, Ryan Mueller has been examining the Blue Jays Latin American signings year-by-year. He recently looked at the 2014 class, which remains both young and raw. It will be interesting to see how the scope and aggression of the Jays Latin American operations change under new management.

Chavez and his wheels  –  More fun from The Sun here, as Steve Buffery looks at Blue Jays starter Jesse Chavez and his obsession with classic cars. His chosen chariot on that day was “Roxanne”, which is a “1965 black Continental with suicide doors and a 430 V8 engine.”

Next: Blue Jays roster odds: Darrell Ceciliani edition

Pillar the leadoff man  –  Kevin Pillar is the Blue Jays leadoff hitter, and while John Gibbons won’t admit it, he kind of will. Here’s the story from Gregor Chisholm of MLB.com where Gibbons *doesn’t* admit it.

“We haven’t announced anything, but we’ve been pretty much running one guy,” Gibbons said. “I don’t know if that means anything. … That was sarcasm.”

SkyDome Legacy  –  Here’s a good piece of “something different”, a story from Sarah-Joyce Battersby of the Toronto Star on the family of SkyDome architect Rod Robbie, who are looking to find a home to archive the many models, papers, and pieces of SkyDome memorabilia they currently store in a Leaside storage locker.