Blue Jays camp report
DUNEDIN, Fla. -- Five things to know about the Toronto Blue Jays:
1. Perhaps Toronto should attend a few Shortstops Anonymous sessions. When David Eckstein plays in his first game in 2008, he will become the 16th shortstop for the club since the 2001 season. Ranking first on the games played chart is the immortal -- or not -- Chris Woodard with 246 games. And he hasn't played since 2004.
2. Two biggest questions the club needs to answer this spring: Who follows Roy Halladay, A.J. Burnett, Shaun Marcum and Dustin McGowan in the rotation, and who plays left field. As for the first question, in Toronto's perfect world, Jesse Litsch (7-9, 3.81 ERA in '07) steps up and wins the No. 5 slot, giving Gustavo Chacin (elbow) more time to heal. In left field, 40-year-old Matt Stairs (.289, 21 homers, 64 RBI in '07) likely will platoon with Reed Johnson or Shannon Stewart. "Stairs is such a good hitter we'd be crazy not to take advantage of his X number of at-bats," general manager J.P. Ricciardi says.
3. The production of outfielders Vernon Wells and Alex Rios will be among the keys to whether Toronto stays in contention all season and possibly bypasses Boston and the Yankees in the AL East. Wells had a miserable year in '07 (for him), with just 16 homers and 80 RBI, before finally undergoing surgery on his left shoulder. So far, so good with that this spring. Rios, meantime, produced only seven homers and 32 RBI after the All-Star break.
4. Manager John Gibbons has a respectable 270-266 career-record in 3 1/3 seasons of piloting the Blue Jays, but he's entering the final season of his contract and Toronto is waiting to see how things go before discussing an extension with him. "Gibby's done a great job. He's over .500 as a manager in the AL East and he's got a good coaching staff," Ricciardi says. "But we gave him an extension last spring. There's every indication that we're going to keep Gibby managing here." Especially if the Jays win.
5. One of these years, Halladay is going to win -- nah, not the Cy Young, he's won it once and well could win it again -- the Roberto Clemente Good Guy award. You don't hear much about his deeds because Halladay is quiet by nature and Toronto doesn't get much national publicity, but Halladay runs a program called "Doc's Box" in Toronto in which, for selected Sunday games during the season, they invite selected kids and their families from Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children to a suite in Rogers Centre.
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