Weekend in an Nutshell (Eggshell?)

Despite the multiple “Opening Day” options on the menu, the season never really feels like it’s in full swing until that first weekend, when all of the teams are in action. By Easter Monday, every team will have a full series under their belts, including the Jays, who dropped a 4-3 decision to Cleveland on Sunday afternoon. With a couple of extra-inning wins and a regular old loss under their belts, we can start jumping straight to premature and unjustified conclusions about the state of the team. So let’s get to it, shall we?

Kelly Johnson

There was some speculation as spring training drew to a close that second baseman Kelly Johnson might find himself as the leadoff hitter, after seeing some success out of the spot in exhibition games. I dare say that Johnson, at least for this three game series, was the team’s best hitter, and put in a performance nearly ideally suited to the two-hole. It would have been all the more productive had Yunel Escobar displayed even the slightest bit of effectiveness at the plate, but even batting with few on base ahead of him, Johnson put together a string of three strong days with the bat, including his ninth-inning homer on Saturday that briefly pulled the Jays ahead. It’s been said before, but replacing the massive black hole that was Aaron Hill’s second base production with even a reasonable facsimile of what Johnson has produced in the past is sure to make a big difference this season.

The Bullpen

I don’t think anyone would have expected that Ricky Romero would have been outshone on the hill by both Brandon Morrow and Joel Carreno in this series, but that’s what happened. Even with Morrow pitching pretty well and getting a bit unlucky (sound familiar?) and Carreno holding his own in his major league debut as a starter, the team relied heavily on some strong innings from the relief corps, and they largely pulled through. It wasn’t without its hiccups – Sergio Santos, in his first “real” save opportunity on Saturday after Luis Perez cock-blocked his chance on Thursday, got tagged with the dreaded “BS”; Francisco Cordero didn’t look especially sharp finishing things a few innings later. For the most part, though, the bullpen worked pretty well around the baserunners they allowed, and managed to record some big outs at key times, especially in the marathon opener.

It’s important to pull out wins like this in the early season. The offense didn’t do much against the starters, but the bullpen kept things close until the bats could get a crack at the opposing relievers. We might not have seen that in 2011. They might find themselves in the same situation more than a few times this year, and I like their chances of repeating that kind of result.

Coming Up

The hype of the home opener awaits on Monday, and the Red Sox will come to town having dropped three straight at the hands of the Tigers. I think that probably says more about how good the Tigers are likely to be this year than it says about some perceived weakness in Boston, though I do get quite a kick out of Red Sox Nation on the verge of seppuku after this start. There are still some bats in Beantown, and it could still be a long series for the Jays’ pitching staff if they keep hitting like they did against Detroit.

Joel Carreno was shipped back to Vegas after today’s start, which I suppose wasn’t wholly unexpected given the lack of need for a fifth starter again until April 21. Perhaps in anticipation of a tough series against Boston, Carreno was replaced on the roster by Aaron Laffey, headed to the ‘pen as a lefty eighth man. Laffey ain’t no great shakes, but I don’t mind having another stretched-out arm available out of the pen in case the potent Sox lineup sends a starter to the showers early. He’s a “just-in-case” call-up, I reckon. We can probably measure the success of the first home series of the season against the number of innings Laffey gets to pitch, with one being inversely proportional to the other.

Far be it from me to take the Lord’s name in vain on this holiest of weekends, but goddammit is it nice to have baseball back again.

A Better Back End

We’re greeted this April Fool’s Day by the entirely unsurprising news that Dustin McGowan, sidelined with plantar fasciitis, isn’t expected to be back in action until late April at the earliest, and that his recovery might stretch into May. Everyone put down those ballots for Comeback Player of the Year, and put the caps back on your Sharpie markers, please. This race is still wide open.

I feel awful for Dustin McGowan. The good news, of course, is that this isn’t an arm, shoulder or knee problem, but any setback at this point for the oft-injured pitcher inevitably raises questions about his ability to ever stay healthy for an extended period, and about the contract extension the team agreed to give him during the latter part of Spring Training.

There are still 29 players on the 25-man roster at the time of writing, including McGowan and Jesse Litsch, both of whom will be starting the season on the Disabled List. This is where things get interesting on the back end of the rotation. Kyle Drabek and Aaron Laffey have been, we’re told, in a battle for the final spot that would have been McGowan’s. Drabek would be my pick simply based on upside – an upside that, if even close to realized in the early part of the season, would make for some tough roster decisions when a healthy McGowan is available.

Imagine for a moment a world in which Kyle Drabek, even in limited action in April (since the need for a fifth starter appears scarce), pitches excellent big-league innings. Maybe seven strikeouts per nine, some semblance of control, some knee-buckling curveballs – the sort of performance that makes you want to see more. Can you give him more, if you’re John Farrell and Alex Anthopoulos? Can you, with a newly-extended, now-healthy McGowan coming back on the roster, let Drabek stay with the big club? And if the answer is yes, how do you go about it?

This gets even more complicated if Drabek were to out-pitch Brett Cecil, currently penciled into the rotation alongside Ricky Romero, Brandon Morrow, and Henderson Alvarez. In that scenario, the options issue enters the equation: both Cecil and Drabek have options remaining, McGowan does not.

Gaming this hypothetical scenario out even further, a resurgent Drabek would force a decision on either a healthy McGowan or a less effective Cecil. This, given the ability to burn an option on Cecil and an already crowded bullpen, becomes not a terribly difficult decision at all. It would surprise me very little to see Brett Cecil in a Las Vegas 51s uniform before the end of May. (Well, I wouldn’t see it for myself, unless someone wants to take me a sweet road trip and pay for it.)

Even highly hypothetical scenarios like this turn Cecil into Exhibit A of the wisdom of accumulating high-ceiling young arms in a team’s system. Cecil was formerly ranked among the top prospects for the organization, back at a time when the organization as a whole was not thought to be all that strong. The Brett Cecil of three years ago probably doesn’t crack the top five pitching prospects at various levels of the Blue Jays’ minor league system that exist today. Sure, Cecil has put in reasonably effective big-league time, which you can’t say about Noah Syndergaard, Justin Nicolino, Daniel Norris or Drew Hutchison. But he’d be behind those guys now.

Now, it probably sounds to you like I’m terribly down on Cecil, but I’m not. I also don’t think Brett Cecil is by any means on the outs with the Blue Jays. He’s just become a different kind of asset for the club than he was when he was first coming up, because the other assets now in place are so much better. In a nutshell, this is exactly what I think Alex Anthopoulos set out to achieve when he took over the organization and set to re-stock it: healthy competition from high-ceiling athletes at all positions, pushing hard against a much stronger core at the major league level for playing time.

If Brett Cecil makes 30 starts for the Jays this year, it will likely either be because of trades and/or health issues with other pitchers, or because the arms pushing against him for a spot didn’t quite reach that ceiling the organization expects – yet. But they’ll still be there, creating tougher, more intense competition, next spring and the ones after that.