There seem to still be so many unanswered questions about the Jays’ offseason — is this really the outfield? who gets moved? is more pitching coming? — but the march toward Spring Training continues on, which today includes a bit of procedural news (with perhaps an interesting prospect-y twist): the announcement of the Jays’ internal non-roster invitees to big league camp in Dunedin:

Now, by “non-roster” they mean guys not on the 40-man, which is why you’re not seeing names like Anthony Alford, Dalton Pompey, Teoscar Hernández, Dwight Smith Jr., Richard Ureña, Reese McGuire, Danny Jansen, Gift Ngoepe, Thomas Pannone, Tim Mayza, Ryan Borucki, etc.

The names you’ll notice you’re not seeing, of course, are those of the guys from the lower minors, like Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette. Well, except for Max Pentecost. Well that’s a little interesting, no?

Except, maybe not. Guys like Bichette and Guerrero would be significantly younger than anybody in camp. Well, apart maybe from Roberto Osuna, who is still not yet 23. Pentecost will turn 25 in early March, and with pedigree plus all the lost development time he’s accumulated over the years, is a bit of a different animal than his young Dunedin teammates. But the fact that Osuna is still on the young end of the spectrum is perhaps telling of the way the new front office approaches such things, as opposed to the old one. Harris, for example, is a year and a half older than Osuna, and Reid-Foley is only six months younger. Most of these guys have paid some dues on their way up the chain. The real young ones are going to have to bide their time — which maybe tells us something about how the club is going to approach their movement up the organizational ladder as well.

Or maybe it doesn’t! Like you’ll always hear Atkins and Shapiro say, it’s the prospects who are going to tell the front office when it’s time to move up, not the other way around. And as for those worried that they won’t get as many chances to see Vlad and Bo in Grapefruit League action this spring, it’s important to remember that there are always guys coming over from minor league camp to fill in spots on the roster, especially in the early days. Will Vlad be asked to go to Montréal just before the season starts, where his father will be honoured in a ceremony before one of the Jays’ two exhibition games? I certainly don’t think that’s out of the question. If he doesn’t, though, that will be a story, I think.

Is this a story? Not really — not the Vlad and Bo aspect of it. But how the Jays handle their two uber-prospects is definitely going to be watched in 2018, and I guess this is a pretty good first piece of that puzzle.