The new season of Major League Baseball begins! As the Blue Jays kick off their campaign Thursday with a visit to the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium, several players from the Toronto roster are intriguing in the early days.
• Also read: Baseball Season Starts at American: Don’t bet your house on the Jays!
Alex Manoah
Pitcher Alek Manoah will start the season opener while his counterpart Miles Mikolas will be for the Cards.
“A few years ago I came to the camp and did everything I could to make it difficult for the organization to cut me off. To be named an opening day starter a few years later is fantastic,” the 25-year-old shooter said recently, as quoted by the Blue Jays website.
In 2022, Jose Berrios, still with the Jays, had the honor of starting the first game on the mound. In Manoah’s case, he was fourth in the rotation and began his season on April 11 in New York by knocking out the Yankees for six innings and conceding just one hit, in a 3-0 win. The Florida pitcher’s success held on for the remainder of the year. In 31 starts he went 16-7 with a 2.24 ERA. Manoah didn’t steal his place on the mound for this first game, which marks a career first for him.
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Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
After his 48th home run season in 2021, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit the long ball 32 times last season. It will be interesting to see how many “bombs” Junior has this season. Can he keep up with the New York Yankees’ Aaron Judge? Fun Fact: Guerrero Jr. has hit a home run in two career games at Busch Stadium. It happened on May 24 in an 8-1 win for the Blue Jays at the expense of reliever Drew VerHagen.
Bo Bichette
Bo Bichette, also one of the Blue Jays’ main stars, has done well in training camp, averaging a .315 batting average with 17 goals in 54 official appearances on the record. The shortstop also led Toronto in home runs by four. He also had three stolen bases. Bichette is one of the Jays’ most electrifying players. After a total of 393 games, he has a .297 average since he began his major league baseball career in 2019.
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Nathan Luke
Used as a defensive outfielder, Nathan Lukes’ choice comes from left field. We shouldn’t expect Lukes to have a huge impact on the Blue Jays, but his performance will be impressive given that he was the 26th and final player on the Jays’ roster at the end of camp practice, not Quebec’s Otto Lopez. We can therefore think that Lopez’s fate is closely tied to Lukes’ performance in the short term. At 28, Lukes has no big league experience, having played at AAA level with the Buffalo Bisons last year.
Eric Swanson
Reliever Erik Swanson could regularly set the table before late-game specialist Jordan Romano gets on the mound. Swanson was acquired by the Mariners in a trade that sent top outfielder Teoscar Hernandez to Seattle. So the expectations are high for this pitcher, who has only been used once in the Grapefruit League in the last 10 days of the pre-season, which is March 22nd. In 2022, Swanson had his best season of his career, posting a 1.68 ERA in 53 2/3 innings on the mound for the Mariners.
- In addition to Thursday’s game between the Blue Jays and the Cardinals in St. Louis, the game scheduled at Fenway Park in Boston between the Red Sox and the Baltimore Orioles, two teams from the American League East Division, will also be monitored.