Happy Friday. It’s been a long week in Blue Jays land, and a long week here in Calgary for that matter. It snowed sideways yesterday, about eight inches. Other Tom is enjoying 21 degrees and cherry blossoms in Tokyo, not that I’m bitter.
Anyways, in Jays news, Jose Berrios pitched in Dunedin yesterday. The surface stats were ugly, five runs on five hits and a walk over 2.2 with three strikeouts. Some of the pitches that got hit were definitely left way too much out over the plate. Probably more importantly, though, he was sitting 93 and 94 with his sinker and four seamer, respectively, which is better than he managed last year by about a mile an hour, and was getting all his pitches over. He was allowed to throw 47 pitches, so he’s well into stretching out, but I would imagine we’ll need to see him handle 30+ more pitches and look significantly sharper in a minor league game before he’s back in Toronto, which probably makes early May the target at this point.
Tonight will be a big test for how much of a problem the wait is, as Eric Lauer makes his first start since (hopefully) fully recovering from the stomach flu that sapped his stuff and lead him to getting rocked his last two times out. Tomorrow, we’ll hopefully see Max Scherzer bounce back from a couple of ugly outings as he’s dealt with forearm tendinitis. If one or both can look at least serviceable, the Jays have a hope of getting through this stretch until Trey Yesavage and Berrios make it back. If not, it’s going to be a rough ride.
More optimistically, although not for 2026, Nolan Perry took the ball for the next five innings and allowed just one hit. He also punched out a dozen, somehow only needing 60 pitches to do it. It took about one inning of seeing Perry this spring for me to realize he should have been on the main prospect list, but at least Matt was smart enough to feature him prominently on his pref list. He’ll definitely feature in our midseason update, and not at the bottom. Other early standputs among lower ranked prospects in the farm system include Daniel Guerra, a 22 year old righty who struck out 11 in five hitless innings for the Vancouver Canadians last night to bring his early K total to 23 in 14.1 innings, Charles McAdoo, who’s showing a better eye and making more contact at AAA than he did last year at AA and posting a .900 OPS because of it, and the New Hampshire trio of Eddie Micheletti jr, Sean Keys and Jayce Bohrofen, who’ve combined for 11 home runs so far with improved underlying data.
That’s it for Jays news. On a happier note, here’s Mike Trout hitting a 450 foot tank as the Angels beat the Yankees in New York:
You have to remember to find joy where you can.
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