Spring Depth

This is happening.  Actual baseball players are playing actual baseball on actual baseball diamonds.  Now, those players may be major leaguers half-assing it in the early spring, or minor league scrubs whole-assing it with no hope of making an Opening Day roster.  But it's baseball all the same, and it's a glorious thing.

Besides, there are at least a few things are already in mid-season form, like Prince Fielder's bat-flip, for instance.  Is it important that one of the premier sluggers in the game zeroed in on a Brandon Morrow offering and lit him up like a senior citizen's birthday cake?  Of course not.  To me, little tidbits of entertainment like these are the things that makes the otherwise tedious spring training experience more fun.  Even in the earliest games, we get a glimpse of the kind of best-on-best match-ups that keep us watching through the dog days.

Of course, we also get to see some of the kinds of plays that will eventually get real prospects into the majors one day, like Anthony Gose robbing Austin Jackson of at least one extra base, if not two or three.  Seeing Gose zoom straight back off the crack of the bat and track that fly ball perfectly got me thinking about depth on the Blue Jays roster for 2013.

While it's a given that Gose is slated for AAA Buffalo to start the year -- I mean, they aren't even pretending otherwise -- it bears repeating that he racked up a surprising 189 above-replacement-level plate appearances in the big leagues in 2012.  Even the most optimistic Colby Rasmus boosters (and I count myself among them) have to feel more comfortable knowing such a capable defender is available in case he struggles or takes a step backward.  With what should be a more potent lineup in place for 2013, even if Gose brings a bat that... um, let's say "needs maturing", he provides enviable depth in the outfield.

Add to Gose the fairly canny signing of Ryan Langerhans (despite his apparent maiming of Mike McCoy in an outfield collision on Saturday), bringing Adam Loewen back into the fold as a 1B/OF, and hell, maybe even Lance Zawadzki , and you have the makings of a respectable set of AAA outfielders who could be called on in a pinch as a fourth outfielder for -- picking a number out the blue here -- 15 days.

(EDIT: only took me a day or so after posting to realize Zawadzki is actually an infielder, but the broader point about depth in Buffalo stands.  Plus, Moises Sierra is still a thing that exists, so I guess you could throw him into the AAA mix of outfielders.)

Speaking of depth, I might be overreacting to a pretty minor feature of the defensive lineup John Gibbons fielded on Saturday at Joker Marchant Stadium, but I was intrigued by his decision to start the game with Emilio Bonifacio at shortstop and Maicer Izturis at second base, and even more intrigued when he flip-flopped the two of them a few innings in.

We're not quite in Tampa Bay's shortstop-at-every-position territory just yet, but it speaks well of the potential versatility of the infielders available that least three of them can play passably at the toughest spot.  If the withered corpse of Mark DeRosa can log a few innings a week at third, second or a corner outfield spot, there should be more than enough defensive options for Gibbons to spell Brett Lawrie, Jose Bautista, and Jose Reyes, maybe give them a half-day off as the DH, and keep them fresh over the 162-game grind.

Finding hope in the depth

So it's February, and hope springs eternal and all that sort of thing.

For the past three or four years, there's been this sense with the Blue Jays that they're almost there. Since the 86-win season in 2003, we've felt like we're on the cusp of something good, and it is all about to go our way. If only this goes right for us, and that goes wrong for them, then in the end we'll be right there, playing meaningful September games.

We've also been teased like a drunken frat boy at Lake Havasu by all of the national (American) pundits picking the Jays as the team that "just might surprise this year" for pretty much the last three years. The disappointments of those years have caused the delicate flesh of our hopes and dreams to callous over.

It's with this in mind that we allow ourselves to get marginally excited about the prospects of the 2008 squad, especially where it comes to the team's depth. At virtually every position, the Jays have Major League calibre players who can step in if the putative starter goes down in a flaming heap this year.

If Zaunie chokes on a forkfull of pancake and sausage, there's Barajas. If Overbay pops his shoulder out catching a bouquet, we've got Stairs. If Rolen's inner-ear revolts on him due to extended periods of time listening to his Limp Bizkit intro music, Scutaro or Johnny Mac can step in. There will be no extended periods where a Jason Phillips-type or a Howie Clark-type will be a starter on this year's roster. We have to think that will be a good thing. Because there's only so many automatic outs you can bear in a lineup.

What's more, we're not looking at a competition between old scrubs (Thomson-Ohka-Zambrano) for the fifth starter position. The Jays have legitimate arms both in the rotation and the bullpen, to the point where some of the pitchers who contributed significantly to keeping the team from imploding into a dusty pile may find themselves in Syracuse or elsewhere, simply because there aren't enough spots.

A talented core is one thing, and we think that the Jays have that (although not at the same level as the Tigers or Red Sox.) But our hopes for 2008 rest almost entirely on the depth of the team assembled.

Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.