Predictions:

In the AL East : Either Boston or NY will not make the post season.  Injuries in thier starting staff shows thier weakness in the bullpen.  Baltimore will emerge as an up and coming team and place 2nd.  TO will see some growth in thier young players but really wish they played in another division.

AL Central: Kansas City places second in the division and ButtlerGordon finally emerge.  Minesota takes first place and Liriano has 35 saves.  White Sox are surprisingly bad and Guillen is the first coach fired.

AL West: Seattle wins the AL west and the have a couple big surprises: Milton Bradley hits 30 HR, Bedard pitches healthy and League emerges as thier closer.  Thier season ends in a nice note when Griffey retires after going to the playoffs. 

Seattle has 2 pitchers in the Cy Young voting(Lee and Felix), but don't win because they split thier vote.  Verlander wins the Cy Young.

MVP will be Justin Moreneau.

The Zach Zinicola era is over.  Zinicola was returned to the Nationals today per Jordan Bastian.

This is not a surprise as the Jays have a lot of candidates for the bullpen and Zinicola didn't really stand out this spring.  His competition, Casey Janssen, Jeremy Accardo, Josh Roenicke and Merkin Valdez will be happier today. 

Roy Halladay winning 30 games for his first NL Cy Young award.

I'll agree with half of this -- he gets his "first" NL CYA (out of how many, though?) but the era of the 30-game winner is long dead and gone. He'll win 18-22 or so.

I think Baker is extremely professional and quite good. We did a whole series of feature interviews WITH both Baker and Richard Griffin a while back …

I guess we can now sing "No No Zinicola" to the Kinks "Lola".  Zinicola will unfortunately be remembered for plunking Yankees catcher Francisco Cervelli in the melon earlier this month.

Blue Jays release Casey Fein per Bastian.  The Jays have too many bullpen arms at this point.

Casey we hardly knew ya!

Brian Dopirak has been sent down to AAA.  It looks like Randy Ruiz has the RH DH job, not that there was much doubt. 

Also Jaret Hoffpauir and Kyle Phillips were sent down.  44 players remain per Bastian.  The Jays have under 2 weeks left in Florida now.  I assume they will be down to 25 or 26 players before they head to Houston for their final exhibition games.

John,

The pass is transferable.. There isn't any identity characteristics on a card... It kind of just looks like a TTC pass....

If you got two passes and  both your daughters wanted to go, you could get 3 tickets together by just paying for the extra seat..

The pass is a fantastic deal. For those of us who live in the downtown area, it makes total sense, as you can usually sneak into the 100 on dead games; looks like there will be plenty this  year.

From the New York Post via MLB Trade Rumors (so take it with a grain of salt): The Diamondbacks are looking for pitching and among the teams with available pitching are the Jays: 

The D'Backs had interest in Jays pitcher Dana Eveland earlier in the offseason. Sherman says the Blue Jays would be very happy to move Eveland or Brian Tallet.

Brandon Morrow was scratched from his scheduled start today due to a sore shoulder.  The Jays describe the move as precautionary.  Stay tuned for further updates.

Next!

Bastian reports that Edwin Encarnacion is feeling much better and took batting practice today.

On Friday morning, Encarnacion stepped into the batter's box at Dunedin Stadium and tested his surgically repaired left wrist during a round of batting practice. It was Encarnacion's first time taking batting practice in roughly two weeks, and he was feeling good after the session.

"It feels good. I'm almost ready," Encarnacion said. "I think I'm going to be ready to play in a couple of days. I didn't feel anything today."

More from Bastian via Twitter:

Health-wise, McGowan said he's fine: "It's just more fatigue it seems like. I haven't thrown this much in a while."

Brandon Morrow was scratched from his scheduled start today due to a sore shoulder.  The Jays describe the move as precautionary.  Stay tuned for further updates.

You know what this reminds me of, in the context of Richmond's injury and all the injuries the Jays had last year? It reminds me of the "Die Broke" philosophy. The idea is that people should rig their finances so that they have enough money to carry them to the ends of their lives, and no more. (Presumably your kids can fend for themselves.)

Maybe the idea of accumulating all these starting pitching candidates was to have enough so that the last five of them to remain standing wouldn't suffer their season-ending injuries until the last week of the season. Then in 2011 they can start all over again.

Wow, all of that much-vaunted "pitching depth" has been disappearing in a hurry -- or, if not disappearing, it's being postponed into the future anyway.  As noted in this thread already, McGowan is probably months away from a major-league starting role.  Richmond and Litsch are injured.  Cecil, Drabek, Mills and Ray all need time in the minors.  Purcey is now relegated to the bullpen -- where he managed to walk two batters in a single inning today.  Morrow has been showing mixed results in spring training, and now there are potential injury concerns too.  Lance Broadway seems to be an off-off-Broadway production.  Eveland has been posting some pretty good numbers, but it's unclear if he's good enough to start in the majors -- and Bastian recently tweeted that Eveland is being considered only for the bullpen.

Who does that leave?  Marcum and Romero are fixtures.  Rzep seems to be sticking in the rotation, and probably should be given the chance to stick, although he had a bad outing recently.  And so, for the final two spots in the rotation, we're left with Morrow and Tallet -- even though Tallet really should be in the bullpen and Morrow probably needs more time in the minors.  So, with all of the "depth" that we thought the Jays had, the team is pretty well forced to keep Morrow and Tallet in the rotation, regardless of what happens for the rest of spring training.  Not much depth, if the team is obliged to keep two pitchers in the rotation who should probably be elsewhere.

• Three of the Jays starters - Marcum, Romero, and Scrabble - will put in a strong, successful season, with lots of promise for the future, winning 42 games among them, sometimes aided by surprisingly strong early leads that give them a cushion to ride on
• Tallet will have his best season yet, but that will mean he ranks as a strong fifth starter, let's say adding 9 wins to that total; still, he will not establish himself to be a long run rotation answer, given the alternatives
  
• McGowan will go to the pen once he comes off the disability list - I count on zero wins from him as a starter
  
• Assuming he is/stays healthy, Morrow will struggle, disappoint, but will be given plenty of scope to show what he can do - as of today, I am counting on only 4 wins from him
• Ultimately one of Cecil or Stewart will push himself into Morrow's spot, and will win another 5 games in that slot; if Morrow is an Opening Day scratch, Cecil will take his slot and win 9 games over the year; unlike Tallet, he will still be seen as a possible keeper in the rotation 
• None of Richmond, Litsch or Shawn Hill will win a start with this year's team
  
• The bullpen will inherit a number of games where they are tied or losing, and a combination of Hill, Lind, Ruiz, Snider, Bautista, Encarnacion, Wallace, Buck, Arencibia and yes, even modestly recovering Overbay and Wells will slug them back into the lead - I project another 15 wins from the pen, especially if Frasor gets to be the closer
  
• This makes for 75 wins, far from horrible, indeed just hopeful enough to keep us all coming back for more

Bastian has the Dustin McGowan story here.

The short version is that the Jay's trainers told McGowan he would likely have a tired arm this spring having been off for 18 months.  McGowan understands that and knows he is likely to start the season still on the DL.

Mike, you and I might both feel that Eveland is adequate for the rotation, but the reality is that he's been dumped by three teams (Arizona, Milwaukee and Oakland) and the Jays have not been impressed enough with him to make him a contender for the rotation (according to Bastian, who should know what the Jays are privately saying).   Eveland has a career ERA of 5.54 and a career WHIP of 1.704.   He's had a few good games in the Grapefruit League, but that doesn't necessarily qualify him for a full-time major-league slot.  If he's pressed into the rotation, it will be a gamble, at best.

If Morrow is injured, or if he totally stinks up the joint, of course the Jays will find someone to replace him (they'll have to) -- whether it's Cecil or Eveland or whomever.  My point is that these are not great options.  And my point is that nobody is pushing Morrow neck-and-neck for a slot in the rotation.  He's basically been handed a slot, regardless of his performance in spring training, because of a lack of major-league-ready alternatives.  Could Morrow benefit from a bit more time in the minors?  We'll never know, because the Jays aren't even considering that option at this point, due to a lack of strong alternatives.

Tom Tango, aka tangotiger, gets featured in the Star today.  Here is the heading:

Sabermetrics: Stats guru advising Blue Jays.

There's no statistic too obscure for Blue Jays adviser Tom Tango, a self-taught, secretive superstar in the growing field of sabermetrics

Some of you may find this of interest since it concerns two Jays prospects. Yesterday (21 March) John Sickels, on his Minor League Ball, presented the stats for two unnamed pitching prospects and asked readers to vote on which was the most promising. To spoil the suspense, the two were Zach Stewart and Kyle Drabek and the numbers clearly make Stewart look like the better bet. Sickels says he did this because he thinks Stewart is greatly overlooked as a future MLB starter.

I think the best-case scenario (realistically speaking) is that all three pending FA relievers fall just below Type A status.  This way, they have enough value to not be a huge risk to accept arbitration if offered, but not high enough in value that it's not going to cost potential suitors their first-round pick to sign them as free agents.

On the other hand, the absolute best-case scenario is the three form the greatest 7th, 8th, and 9th inning lockdown guys in the history of Major League Baseball and the Jays ride their arms all the way to a World Series victory... or that they are traded midseason for Evan Longoria, Franklin Gutierrez, and Matt Wieters.  A guy can dream.

RJ Anderson at Fangraphs writes a story in praise of Shawn Camp.

What makes Camp intriguing besides his (presumably) lower trade return and modest salary just over a million dollars? He’s a groundball machine (56% career) and devours righties (career 3.05 K/BB ratio against them). Any pitcher who can survive in the American League East is worthy of a look-see, and a transition into the American or National League Central would almost certainly improve his numbers, albeit on a marginal level.

 In other bullpen related news Jesse Carlson threw off a mound yesterday to test his knee and seemingly all was fine.  He will throw off a mound again tomorrow and all going well could pitch in games this weekend.