The affiliates took two of out three Tuesday night. The highlight was a walk-off win, the lowlight was a walk-off loss. One of the games was a rainout. Enjoy the ride on the Tuesday MLU train!

There were two games scheduled in the state of Pennsylvania and both of them were washed out.



The Buffalo Bisons were rained out in Lehigh Valley for the Iron Pigs home opener while the New Hampshire Fisher Cats saw their game scrubbed in Reading. The Herd will play a doubleheader in Lehigh Valley on Wednesday while the Fisher Cats game will be made up on May 19. 

The affiliates were 2-2 today, highlighted by an extra inning win by Buffalo.  Dwight Smith JR had a monster game against a rehabbing Cole Hamels in the FSL with Dunedin, to go along with a strong start by Daniel Norris.

After a perfect first night the Jays go 2-1 on Friday. Deck McGuire pitched well for New Hampshire and AJ Jimenez had three hits to lead the Fisher Cats to the win. Lansing got good pitching from three prospects plus good hitting from several hitters to win easily. Dunedin lost in extra innings despite excellent pitching by Taylor Cole. Buffalo were rained out.

Winners all round to start the season. Marcus Stroman, Aaron Sanchez and Matt Boyd all pitched well. Anthony Gose, Matt Tuiasosopo, Kenny Wilson, Ryan Schimpf, Kevin Nolan, AJ Jimenez, Dwight Smith and KC Hobson all had multi hit games.

Lansing played in the cross town showdown against Michigan State, details to come later.

Today is opening day for the minor leaguers. Three of the Jays full season teams start league play today. The Lansing Lugnuts play their annual exhibition game against Michigan State. The full slate is shown below.

The minor league season starts on Thursday but the rosters have been finalized.  Teams are flying in to their cities and ready to meet the media and season ticket holders before the games begin.

Two teams have released their rosters so far.

Over the next few days the rosters of the Blue Jays full-season minor-league affiliates will be released to the public. But for this upcoming season, Lansing has the potential to be a very exciting team to follow.

As we get ready for another season I thought I would spotlight a few players for whom 2014 will be a make or break year.  This category fits players whose prospect staus is on the bubble or almost gone.  The top prospects are generally not in the make or break category, they are on a path to the majors, they will get a second chance if they have a bad year.  Newly drafted players would not be make or break, they still have time to fix any problems or recover from a bad season or bad half-season.  Make or break are players who have been in the system for several years and have hit some bumps in the road, and those bumps could knock them out of baseball if the player cannot overcome them.

Yesterday I looked at the expected assignments for hitters coming out of spring training.  Today I will look at the starting pitchers.  Usually to start the season there will be at least one starter per two teams that is on the DL so for some teams I will list six starters.

It is only a couple of weeks until the 2014 minor league rosters will be announced.  Today I am discussing my predictions of the opening day assignments for the hitters.  Tomorrow I will look at starting pitchers.

My yearly bible finally found its way to my door! The Baseball America 2014 Prospect Handbook has compiled its top 30 prospects for all 30 major league teams. The Toronto Blue Jays farm system is right in the middle of the pack according to BA - ranking 15th out of 30 teams - a drop of three spots from 2013.



Mitch Nay made the biggest leap in the Top 30 rankings, jumping 20 spots from last year to rank as the Jays' fourth best prospect in 2014.

I have talked with some of my minor league contacts over the last few days to get updated on winter news before they head to Florida at the end of this week for spring training.  Here are some notes from those conversations.

The three-time Northwest League champion Vancouver Canadians will have a different look when they take to the field in 2014.

The Canadians - with the help of members from the UBC Thunderbirds baseball club - unveiled their new uniforms during its 4th annual luncheon at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver. The big changes are a new font, a new Mountie logo on the black jersey and the addition of a uniform number on the front of the jersey. The Blue Jays cap logo is now on the sleeves instead of the circular word logo that was used over the last two seasons. The C's had used the 1977 logo on the sleeves to mark its first year of affiliation with Toronto back in 2011.

Baseball America released their annual Blue Jays Top 10 prospect list today.