It’s finally here! Opening Day! Blue Jays baseball that matters! Ahhhhh!!

With Roberto Osuna hitting the DL for the first week or so (hopefully!) of the season, Jason Grilli will be filling his role as closer. Obviously. Grilli has actual experience in the closer role, and was largely excellent for the Jays last year in the eighth inning spot. Joe Biagini will also likely get some opportunities to close out games in the ninth inning, Gregor Chisholm reports. Ideally, though, John Gibbons doesn’t play to the save, and just uses pitchers when it’s advantageous to do so, in terms of splits and such.

This is, uh, dumb, There’s obviously another reason why Melvin Upton was released from the roster in favour of Ryan Goins, and the team isn’t coming out and saying it. The explanations have been that the team prefers Goins’ versatility, and that he’s more of a fit on this roster, which makes no sense. The Jays only have two real outfielders, Zeke Carrera and Kevin Pillar, with Jose Bautista and Steve Pearce being the other two who simply can’t play out every single day there at their age. Goins is the redundant one on this roster, because he is quite literally a poor man’s Darwin Barney, who the Jays, ya know, already have. Anyways, what’s done is done. Maybe some day we’ll know why this move was actually made beyond the lip service the team is paying us right now.

And finally, here are a couple of pieces on BJN from today to get you amped up for Opening Day, if, for some fucked up reason, you aren’t already. Now let’s get this season going!

TV: SNET, MLB.tv

Radio: SN590

Devon Travis (R) 2B – 101 GP, 432 PA, 11 HR, 50 RBI, .300 AVG, .332 OBP, .454 SLG

Marco Estrada (R) SP –  176 IP, 9-9, 3.48 ERA, 1.119 WHIP, 6.8 H9, 3.3 BB9, 8.4 SO9

Kevin Gausman (R) SP – 179.2 IP, 9-12, 3.61 ERA, 1.280 WHIP, 9.2 H9, 2.4 BB9, 8.7 SO9

I really like this lineup. There’s a few things I would change, like having Kevin Pillar bat ninth as the secondary leadoff guy, swapping him with Zeke. But it’s great to see the Jays using Steve Pearce at first base over Justin Smoak, even though they’re facing a right-handed pitcher, because despite Smoak being a lefty, Pearce is still better at hitting righties than he is. I imagine Pearce will be getting more reps in left field as the season goes on, with Zeke coming off the bench as a pinch runner or late-game defensive replacement, but since he’s coming off surgery, Pearce will see a lot of time at first in the time being. Besides, you can’t not have playoff legend Zeke Carrera play the first game of the season. It would be a bad look!