Thanks tercet. This topic is more up my alley. Pitching should be very good.

One ex Lansing player is Emilio Guerrero. He got a few at-bats today in the major league game and had a hit.

I'm hoping that these guys skip right to A+ based on their age:

1B Dantzler (23)
CF Frank (23)
C Reeves (23)

SP Dermody (23)

Don't want to see 23yr olds in Lansing, when really they should be in AA or AAA by that age. And if they weren't planning on moving these guys up quickly, they should never have drafted them.

I'd probably include SS Thon (22) and SPs Jimenez (22) and Girodo (23) in that group, too.

I'd also graduate the guys who did well in lansing last year:

CF Smith (21)
CF Pompey (21)
SS Guerrero (21)



If it were up to me, the Lansing roster would look something like this.

CF D.Davis (20)
RF J.Davis (22)
LF ?
3B M.Dean (21)
SS D.Lugo (19)
2B C.Lopes (21)
1B M.Nay (20)
C S.Nessy (21)
DH ?


SP T.Robson (21)
SP S.Dawson (20)
SP C.DeJong (20)
SP J.Labourt (20)
SP A.Tirado (19)
SP R.Osuna (19)*

As Gerry also suggested in another thread, I'd like to see Jacob Anderson in right field in Lansing. I believe the Jays are intending to have a tandem rotation thing going on in Lansing, so you could probably add a couple of Adonys Cardona, Dragmire, Gabryszwski and Wasilewski. Also, Dean should get most of his starts at 1B while Nay should be the regular 3B.

As fans we have a serious problem...we have absolutely no idea what guys like Barreto, Castro, Labourt, Tellez and Tirado (as well as many mentioned above) have actually done this spring. Young guys often really change over the off-season and as fans we really have zero information on how they've been performing so far.

Also of course, is the team going to use tandem/piggyback starters? So many things we really don't know...

Lots of unknowns at A ball.  Generally I like to see the team challenge kids - assuming they have shown some ability to handle a level you move them up as fast as possible.

Travis Snider is an example of good and bad with that.  As an 18 year old he was in rookie ball and did very well (979 OPS).  So he was moved to A ball at 19 and also did well (903 OPS) but the K-BB ratio and raw K figures (24.9% of PA) were becoming concerns.  At 20 he started in Dunedin and was hitting for a good OPS (891) but his K's exploded (33.3%) and the Jays pushed him to AA after just 17 games.  In AA he did well (818 OPS) but the K's were still unacceptably high at 27%.  He should've stayed in AA for the rest of the season based on how he was doing (heck, A+ should've been for at least 1/2 a season) but instead he spent August in AAA (Syracuse at the time) and hit for a solid OPS (901) and his K rate did drop a bit (23%).  JPR though was scared for his job so he rushed him all the way to the majors where he held his own (114 OPS+) but the K rate was up to 32% again.  Rather than deciding what to do the Jays made him a yo-yo and after 3 years of decent production (102 OPS+) he collapsed.  Since he has hit for a 77 OPS+ and now is fighting for a job in Pittsburgh.

Clearly skipping A- was a good idea, but the skyrocketing K's without an increase in walks screamed to slow it down a bit.  Losing Syracuse as a AAA team hurt too as Vegas just pushed bad habits onto him I'm sure.  This spring he has done well, 364/391/500, but here he'd be in trouble with the short bench.  From super-prospect to potential waiver wire material and I suspect the rushing too much was a cause.  Skip a level, OK, but make sure players don't have the red lights flashing (high K rate for hitters, low K rate for pitchers).

When do they typically announce rosters?

Ian Kadish has tweeted that's he been released by the Jays today. He struck out 79 hitters in 67 innings with Lansing last year. He is 25 but he'll be snapped up by somebody. He played a big role out of the Vancouver bullpen in their 2012 Northwest League championship conquest.

Minor league rosters are usually announced on Saturday, as in tomorrow.  For a few years I would get a copy of the rosters on Saturday afternoon and publish them here.  After I did that two years ago some, or maybe one, of the minor league teams complained to the Jays.  They want to press release the roster themselves and they were upset that I was announcing the roster before they did.  So last year I didn't get the rosters until the Monday to give the teams, or team, time to make their announcements.

I don't know what will happen this year.  With a lot of players now on Twitter the news of assignments will start filtering out tomorrow anyway but I assume the Jays will want to please the teams and hold the rosters back until Monday.

Javier Avendano, Chuck Ghysels among others released

Toma Ohka is gone too..

Awww... I really hoped Ohka would make it at least though the season. Having a guy using the knuckleball in the minors would help the Jay catchers get a feel for it and might encourage other pitchers to try it out.  Never can be too many knuckleball pitchers (much to the regret of catchers everywhere).

We've got Frank Viola junior throwing the knuckler. 

http://www.bluebirdbanter.com/2014/3/5/5475936/jays-sign-another-knuckleball-pitcher

The Blue Jays have told me the rosters will be released on Monday.

Meanwhile, from Twitter:

Deck McGuire is going back to New Hampshire
John Anderson is going to New Hampshire too
Chase DeJong is going to Lansing
Derrick Loveless is also going to Lansing
Justin Jackson staying in Dunedin.

Also from Twitter:

Ben White to Dunedin
Michael Crouse to New Hampshire
Marcus Stroman to Buffalo (obviously)
Tony Davis to New Hampshire

Loveless in Lansing makes sense.

It would have been his fourth go around at short season ball. These guys need to get challenged eventually.

I have a question:
A couple of years ago, John Farrell helped The Jays develop a performance based player development system, where a prospect needed to meet certain criteria before he advanced to the next level. It was something JF did in Cleveland where he was the Director of Player Development.
Can anybody tell me if they are still working the system? Do promotions now depend mainly on criteria based selection?

Another from Twitter:

Jack Murphy unsurprisingly heading to New Hampshire

John Berti to New Hampshire

By the way Stroman tweeted that he's starting opening night in Buffalo on Thursday for anyone thinking about going.

Twitter updates

Dantzler appears to be going through rehab and will stay in extended for now
Justin Atkinson has been placed on Lansing roster

Y Gomes did have some pretty good offensive numbers in the minors, but he never got a lot of ABs per year. He also played multiple positions. I just looked at Sean Ochinko's numbers, pretty good IMO, and he got 400+ABs in 2010 & 11. He too has played multiple positions.

Maybe he can surprise us. He is 26 years old.

from twitter:

Alonso Gonzalez to Lansing

Colton Turner had TJ surgery Feb.4

Lansing vs Michigan State thursday on Big 10 Network 7 pm est & 1 am est