by Barry Stagg
April 1994
Spring Training:Still Alive
There aren't many better antidotes to the terrible plague of winter weather than to hear and see the beginnings of baseball spring training in Florida and Arizona. In late February the teams all gather together and by the first of March they were working out in earnest preparing for those first spring training exhibition games. It is difficult to find anything wrong with the sounds of baseballs soaring all over a field of green grass after you have been watching ice and slush pile up since early November.
The Blue Jays are finding their way onto television even this early in the exhibition baseball season and they are even making an early March visit to Toronto's Skydome as a teaser for the already overheating baseball fans of Ontario. The trials and tribulations of young Rob Butler are becoming a source of concern and frustration for Toronto baseball fans who have already pencilled in Butler as a regular left fielder since last year's World Series. Butler is encountering the typical problems of a rookie outfielder in early spring training. It remains to be seen whether Blue Jays management will advance his career on a preferred basis or whether they will allow him to slip back with the other prospects whom he outdistanced during his early season surge last year while playing at AAA Syracuse in the International League.
There are plenty of reasons to believe that the Blue Jays are going to provide plenty of exciting baseball this summer. A lot of the excitement may centre around the Jays lack of pitching. Toronto shows every indication of imitating those great Cincinnati Reds teams of the early 70's who became perennial pennant contenders on the basis of overwhelming hitting and a very marginal but somehow effective pitching staff. This year early spring training reports have Duane Ward suffering from tendonitis. This can be a very deadly ailment for a relief pitcher since the very essence of short relief is that the pitcher must be able to endure a terrible toll upon his pitching arm for a few brief moments every second day or better. If Ward becomes a chronic tendonitis victim then the Jays may find themselves dependant upon such uncertainties as Mike Timlin and Al Leiter for relief duties. This will certainly make the American League East a very interesting place in which to play baseball this summer.
The Jays are already being hotly chased at the spring training level by the Baltimore Orioles and the New York Yankees. Both teams have solid hitting lineups and the Orioles in particular have gone out and signed free agents to bolster their offence. Left handed hitting first baseman Rafael Palmiero was signed away from the Texas Rangers and he will be joined by power hitting third baseman Chris Sabo who left the Cincinnati Reds. The Orioles already have future hall of famer Cal Ripken at shortstop and with a very solid supporting squad of hitters, they will certainly rival the Blue Jays from the point of view of hitting.
The Yankees have a more uncertain lineup but with veterans like Don Mattingly and the perennially injured but still potent Danny Tartable in the lineup, they will be able to give any team a run for the money at the plate. It is on the mound where the Yankees will rise or fall. They have a relief pitching corps that still makes the Blue Jays staff look very good in comparison. Their success or failure will ride largely on the ability of Manager Buck Showalter to get the most out of a number of young pitching prospects in the hope that they can bolster what is now essentially a bullpen by committee.
Both Baltimore, New York and Toronto face the uncertainty of bullpen by committee. The Jays will escape this problem if Duane Ward is healthy, but otherwise these three teams may provide many an entertaining 10-9 game this season. This will be a delight to the fans even though it will provide the potential for many ulcerated evenings for managers Cito Gaston, Johnny Oates and Buck Showalter.
The sun is shining, the grass will eventually grow and baseball will be played on plastic turf again in April.
Until next month be proud, be prosperous.