Jays Rays

So they're in town.  No Evan Longoria, a healthy dose of Jeff Niemann, and a Jose Bautista who appears to be swinging the bat like the Jose we know.  We'll get Brandon Morrow tonight, too, so that's pretty good.  And the game starts in like 40 seconds so let's get this out of the way, no?

Jeff Niemann pitches for the Rays tonight, as mentioned, which pretty much means that Adam Lind will go 2-for-3 with a walk and a homer.  On a related note, Lind will bat 4th tonight.  Lind absolutely destroys Niemann, as far as his career goes.  I mentioned this last time Niemann started against the Jays, and then read it again earlier today, but there's no time and I lost it, but Lind is hitting something like .419 with 3 HR's in 42 AB's for his career against Jeff.  Spare thoughts on the situation:  Edwin will move to the 5-hole, for some reason, and nobody else in the lineup ever gets small-sample-size preferential treatment.  Whatever.

Edwin gets yesterday's Zaunhead for going 3-for-4 and leading the Jays in WPA by a country mile.  Again, the Jays didn't get a single walk, while Ricky Romero walked 5 over 5.1IP (Carreno walked 3 over his 1.2IP as well).


Stuff

Joel Carreno has been sent back to AA New Hampshire, and Evan Crawford was recalled.  The Jays claim that they would like more lefties for the upcoming Rays and Yankees series'.  I doubt he's going to get a whole lot of action, but a bunch of Rays and Yankees are struggling mightily this season vs. LHP's, apparently.  Hat tip to probably Stoeten for that little piece of info.

Gregor Chisolm (@gregorMLB) gave us a lot today on his twitter.  Among his notes:

• Dustin McGowan threw lightly today.  Still a ways to go before coming back, but he's ahead of schedule.
• Sergio Santos threw from 90 feet today, and will stretch it out a bit over the next few days.  He has no immediate timetable for his return, but it shouldn't be too long.
• Vladimir Guerrero will report to extended spring training tomorrow, if he didn't do so already.
• Carreno is going back to the rotation in AA, as opposed to the bullpen role he's been filling when in Toronto.
• Farrell was disappointed with .500 on the road trip against a weak schedule.  "We're a better team than that."  I personally don't think it's a disaster, but against the teams they played, anything less than 5-5 would have been a pretty big disaster, in my view.

Apparently Brett Lawrie is one of the best fielders ever?  Let's not lose our minds here, 76 games in to his career or whatever.  I'm pretty certain that anything less than 3 years of defensive metrics is more of less useless in terms of sample size, but hey, we can dream.

High fives!

Kyle at driveline baseball wants you to tell your little leaguers to keep the ball up in the zone, at least until they get to the big leagues.

The Rays placed Desmond Jennings on the 15-day DL today.  Good, nice and banged up.

Lineups
Jays

Johnson 2B
Escobar SS
Bautista RF
Lind 1B
Encarnacion DH
Thames LF
Lawrie 3B
Rasmus CF
Arencibia C

Morrow P

Rays

Zobrist RF
Upton CF
Joyce LF
Pena 1B
Scott DH
Rodriguez 3B
Rhymes 2B
Gimenez C
Johnson SS

Niemann P