Ah, the joys of the “camp day.” On a camp day, the minor league club spends most of their day in meetings and doing workouts and this one was punctuated by two simultaneous five-inning intrasquad games. That meant less time at the complex for me, so I headed over to the major league complex to catch a little bit of batting practice before I went back to the Bobby Mattick facility for their intrasquad games.

 

 

Once again, I’ll mention that this daily column is generally reserved for notes about injuries, some gossip I’ve gotten from players as well as general information about the day. If you’re looking for scouting reports, you’ll have to subscribe to our Premium Content section (just click the photo above for more info). With the 2017 Yearly subscription ($17.99), you’ll get a free, downloadable copy of the 2017 Toronto Blue Jays Minor League Handbook and access to all of our scouting reports and player pages online for a full year. For a $1.99 per-month monthly subscription, you’ll get all of our online content and scouting reports as long as your membership is active.

 

 

I arrived at the big league complex just in time to catch Jose Bautista‘s media scrum. Jose was asked about his back (being scratched from the lineup) and about the WBC. Personally, I didn’t really think that the information he gave was anything outside of the usual “athlete-speak” but it was interesting to watch the big boys conduct their interview. I also watched as Jose spoke to MLB Network and then did a segment with Jeff Blair and Stephen Brunt on the radio while I was taking photos around the park as BP was getting under way.

 

I got some good shots of Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Troy Tulowitzki, Kevin Pillar and Josh Donaldson in BP while the pitchers were standing around in the outfield and Ryan Tepera and one other player were running sprints.

With time running out, I headed over to the minor league complex where things were getting ready for the utter chaos that comes with the two simultaneous intrasquad games. Usually when I try to take photos and watch players at spring training, there’s just two games going on with just two players I’m trying to watch (usually it’s the pitcher or the batter). Now, that doubles and while one thing is going on, there’s almost always something happening on the other diamond that I want to see.

 

On the higher-level diamond, we had Sean Reid-Foley and Angel Perdomo pitching for their respective sides with Devon Travis, Yusmeiro Petit, Lourdes Gurriel, Ryan McBroom, Jonathan Davis and many other players all playing at the same time!

 

On the lower-level diamond, we had Denis Diaz and Justin Maese on the mound to start with and Bo Bichette, J.B. Woodman among the players to watch.

The games were just five innings long and the pitchers appeared to be in control, particularly Reid-Foley and Maese. Devon Travis made some hard contact hitting one to the warning track against Reid-Foley.

 

Another great thing to see was T.J. House returning to action. He pitched two innings and had an epic battle against Derrick Loveless that went to 14 pitches before Loveless grounded out to second base. That at bat got the players smiling after every foul ball that Loveless hit.

Once the games were over, I was out of there and caught some of Stroman’s performance at the World Baseball Classic. Wow. I’m hoping that he brings some of that to the Jays!

One more day in Florida, then it’s back to the colder climes up north. Keep an eye out for more scouting reports and, of course, the release of the 2017 Toronto Blue Jays Minor League Handbook!

 

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