Blue Jays Mailbag: Opening Day Lineup and Roster Options

We’re nearly two weeks away from when pitchers and catchers report, and yet it feels like MLB’s offseason hasn’t quite managed to hit its stride. Plenty of free agents remain unsigned, plenty of trades are still likely to be made, and for the Toronto Blue Jays that means a roster that remains in flux—leaving us with a fuzzy picture of what might come next, if anything.

Especially when you start looking at the margins of the Jays’ roster, there are plenty of questions still to be answered. And that’s precisely what I’m going to attempt to do in this week’s edition of our Blue Jays mailbag!

Tim Mayza. Gift Ngoepe. R.A. Dickey. Travis Snider. Rowdy Tellez. All these names will actually be discussed this week—plus some actual exciting ones, too! So let’s do it to it!

And remember, if you have a Blue Jays question you’d like me to tackle for the next mailbag, be sure to send it to stoeten@gmail.com. As always, I have not read any of Griff’s answers.

First off, never “Shatkins.” Never, ever “Shatkins.”

Secondly, what an utterly ridiculous way to frame this question. You’re talking about kids who, combined, have 99 plate appearances above Double-A. Young players that are almost universally believed to still need more time in the minor leagues. Players who are clearly behind more established players on the Jays’ roster, who have actual big league track records of success. These are guys who, with the possible exception of Alford, absolutely should not be on the Opening Day roster, and absolutely should not be reason to cause major roster shifts if they perform well in a tiny sample against players of dramatically varying talent and experience levels in the damn Grapefruit League. And yet you’re trying to preemptively create some kind of an issue here about Ross Atkins and Mark Shapiro having blind loyalty to veterans or something? For fuck sakes, man.

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