Opening Day Threat!: Jays (0-0) @ Yankees (0-0)
Opening Day! The openingest of days! The day where every player on your favourite team is a potential All-Star, and every team except the Orioles and Pirates is a potential World Series champion.
It’s a beautiful thing. An excuse for live chats and panel shows and boundless predictions and projections. A reason for afternoon beers and for daydreaming. For seeing and hearing the familiar sights and sounds that have been the backdrop of our every summer.
For all sorts of little pleasures we get deprived of all winter in the best of years, but have been absolutely robbed of us in our current isolating dogshit Groundhog Day nightmare.
And, as luck and Mark Shapiro would have it, today is the Opening Day of a Major League Baseball season in which the Toronto Blue Jays are going to be very good! Or good. Or, at least, fun. Or, if nothing else, fascinating to watch.
Sure, the team’s pitching staff may not look like much at the moment, but if you squint hard enough, and stay squinted for the next two or three weeks while a few key hurlers mend, you should be able to see a group you could almost believe in. And with the lineup they have now, and the wave of talent building behind them, and the money they’ll have to spend next winter or at this summer’s trade deadline, you can’t help but open your eyes and see the beginning of an era of big, big possibilities.
It’s not perfect, in other words. It never is. It’s baseball. And thank fuck it’s back.
Roster moves!
The Toronto Blue Jays don’t always make things simple, do they? Here we have a team that everybody in the baseball world knew would be starting Hyun Jin Ryu here on Opening Day, but that oddly chose to wait until less than a week ago to make it official, and then did so at every reporter’s favourite time: 10:30 on a Friday night.
And when it came to finalizing their Opening Day roster? Let’s just say that the timing was, once again, a bit inelegant.
But no matter. The news is officially out now, and we can all finally see in full what damage spring training has wrought.
• As expected, infielder Joe Panik and LHP Tim Mayza — both of whom were on minor league deals — have been added to the big league roster.
• Quite a bit more surprisingly, RHP Joel Payamps has made the big league roster as well. He's a hard thrower who doesn't really generate strikeouts or ground balls, so we'll see how that goes. But he's got a minor league option year left, so looks likely to end up being shuttled between the big league roster and the taxi for as long as he sticks around (which, given his history of frequently hitting the waiver wire, may not be long).
• Two other left-handers with options, Anthony Kay and Travis Bergen, have been sent down. One (Kay) to Triple-A, the other (Bergen) to the taxi squad.
• Four players have been added to the injured list (all retroactive to March 29, making them eligible to return to action on April 8 at the earliest): RHP Thomas Hatch (elbow impingement), RHP Nate Pearson (adductor strain), LHP Robbie Ray (elbow contusion), and OF George Springer (oblique strain).
• Right-handed reliever Kirby Yates has also been officially placed on the 10-day injured list, though a move to the 60-day IL is in store for him eventually, as he is out for the season after having undergone Tommy John surgery. Sigh.
• Catcher Reese McGuire and INF/OF Breyvic Valera have both been designated for assignment. In order to be sent to the minors or the taxi squad they will need to clear waivers.
• The taxi squad is, of course, the five-man group (which must include a catcher) that will travel with the Blue Jays as a precaution in case of any positive COVID tests. The club has announced that the following players will begin the year on their taxi squad: C Riley Adams, LHP Travis Bergen, RHP A.J. Cole, INF Santiago Espinal, LHP Tommy Milone.
• Cole remains with the club for now, but it's worth noting that he has an opt-out in his contract that will allow him to become a free agent on May 15 if he's not in the majors.
• Adams will likely not be on the taxi squad for long given the Jays' acquisition late Wednesday of veteran catcher Juan Graterol. He came via a trade with the Angels in exchange for cash.
• As such, the Blue Jays’ official Opening Day roster looks like this:
And now the lineups…
Here are today’s lineups (as stolen from BaseballPress.com)…
Final pre-game thoughts!
We’re getting close to game time, so I’d better make this quick. The Jays are rolling out a hell of a lineup today, and in the days and weeks ahead they’ll be adding George Springer to it, and Alejandro Kirk more frequently. That is a thing of absolute beauty. But it may not feel that way by the time Gerrit Cole gets through with them.
We’ll see about that. Hyun Jin Ryu, who plays for the Toronto Blue Jays, is a very different, but incredibly effective pitcher. He can keep this Yankees lineup at bay, but will he? I suppose we’ll see!
The beautiful thing, though, is that win or lose, once this one’s done we’ll still have 161 more contests to go. Maybe more.
Here’s to October baseball! Let’s go Jays!!
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Man oh man, what a game.
Ladies and gentlemen: your new Blue Jays closer, Jordan Romano.