Catch the taste!

Travis Snider has belted the first home run of spring training for the Jays, an opposite field poke to tie today's proceedings at 1-1 against the Phillies in Clearwater.  He was robbed of extra bases in his first at-bat on a leaping catch at the wall by John Mayberry Jr., the offspring of former Jay John Mayberry.   Just remember, when Snider wins the rookie of the year, you heard it here first!!

Meantime, Jason Lane has just followed with another solo poke and J.P. Arencibia just missed making it back to back to back jacks.  You can listen to today's game on bluejays.com.

The last stop on our minor league organization tour is with the relievers and there are a lot of them.  By my count there are at least 65 relievers in minor league camp plus a few more already assigned to extended spring training.  With smaller roster sizes in some minor league stops there are probably 40 jobs available plus I assume about 10 DL spots.  That's 50 places for 65+ guys.  The other change we see is a very large number of imports, whether by signing or claiming, that could fill the AAA and AA bullpens.  Where is the room for home grown guys like Sean Stidfole, Mike MacDonald, Zach Dials, Daryl Harang and Seth Overbey?

Real baseball is about to be played - well, it may not actually count but guys in Blue Jays uniforms will be going against guys in Yankee uniforms including a few actual major leaguers today at 1:05 PM. Woohoo!

Well, it's officially Prospect List season.  Three Blue Jays hopefuls make the Top 100 this year, though not necessarily in the order you might have thought.

Now that we have all the position players allocated it is time to look at pitchers and there are a lot of them.  Today we will look at starting pitchers and tomorrow we will finish with relievers.

On a heads-up by bauxite timpinder, bluejays.com says center fielder Vernon Wells has pulled his left hamstring and is expected to miss at least a month.  Yes, it is the same hamstring he pulled last season.

UPDATE - The Associated Press says Wells is now expected to miss two weeks with the worst-case scenario being he'll have to DH on Opening Day.

Thirty-six guys come to camp fighting for approximately thirty spots throughout the organization.  Where will they all go?  I hope you don't expect me to know.

While scouring the greatness that is BaseballReference.com for something entirely unrelated to this story, I noticed a really striking thing about a team I haven't thought about at all in three decades -- the 1977-79 Atlanta Braves. Seriously, can you, with confidence, name a single member of those teams? Of course you can -- at the time, former Jay Phil Niekro hadn't even reached his 40th birthday.

But Niekro was truly remarkable those three years, compared to the rest of his Atlanta pitching mates. Nothing agsinst those guys -- there were some other names you'll know, like Dick Ruthven, Andy Messersmith, and for about 20 minutes, even Jim Bouton. But Knucksie, still only about two-thirds down the path toward his 300th career win, and a decade off his brief foray into Toronto baseball, was truly exceptional. Read on and see if you can think of anyone else who's done something similar.

Many moves to note around the majors, some involving familiar big names, if not players of impact (any more) ...

• At the top of the list, old friend Orlando Hudson is now a Dodger.
• Joe Crede switches AL Central addresses, moving from Chicago to Minneapolis to take on the Twins hot corner.
• Recovering frontline starter -- and Anna Benson boytoy -- Kris Benson moves to the Pitchers' Purgatory in Arlington, Texas as an NRI with the Rangers.
• Nomar to the A's?

Any thoughts on these or other moves? What else is going on?

TGIF.  Friday is the end of the working week and it must be time for us to look at the cornerstones, the third basemen.

The venerable Sporting News, which has become a better magazine recently with its move to a more feature-oriented bi-weekly publication schedule, has in its latest issue its annual MLB preview, including "Offseason Grades" for each big league club. Just four major league teams received a "D" -- the Twins, Astros, Padres and Pirates -- for their offseason work. There were all sorts of Bs, a few C's, some A's -- even an A+ for the Yankees.

Oh wait,. There was one "F" ... ladies and gentlemen, your Toronto Blue Jays!

Here's the entire Jays preview, brief but pointed ...

In today's news, as most of you have probably already heard, Ken Griffey Jr. has elected to re-sign with his original club, the Seattle Mariners.

No links here to the many (many, many) news stories, or the love-fest published by the Seatlle Post-Intelligencer. Just a question for today -- a Question of the Day, if you will -- how's this gonna work out? For Da Kid? For the M's?

Feel free to link to any of those many, many stories yourself, of course, with your considered (or snide and funny) commentary attached, of course.

If today is Thursday then it is middle-infield day in our organizational look-ahead to the 2009 season.

We continue on our tour around the bases though the spring training lens.  Today the first basemen take centre stage.