Pitching and Bitching (Part 2)

The second half of the rotation shades  younger than the first half, and contains considerably more question marks.

Brandon Morrow spent most of 2013 on the disabled list. And I assume he spent much of that off time in the weight room, because the dude looks huge. He reportedly packed on 20 lbs of muscle since last season. Whether or not the muscle keeps Morrow off the DL this year is still up in the air. His upside is huge, and he has shown the ability to be a number one over the past few seasons. I not only want him to succeed for baseball reasons, but also for this:

Arthur, start at the top! One time! #jeopardy #annoying
— Brandon Morrow (@2Morrow23) March 12, 2014

I’ll get behind anyone who tweets about Jeopardy.

“From the first day he came into camp, he told me he was going to be in this rotation,” said Pete Walker, the Toronto Blue Jays pitching coach. “He told me probably half a dozen times that first day. So I kept patting him on the shoulder and said, ‘OK, show us.’”

Drew Hutchison, the baby of the staff, backed up his talk. He sat out last season after Tommy John surgery and returned to pitch his face off this spring. He has a 1.80 ERA in the spring and his fastball velocity is at 93-96 mph. It might be nice to not have to count on Hutchison, but here we are. And I’m ready to see what he’s got.

Dustin McGowan rounds out the rotation. Drew Fairservice argues that McGowan was never really that great. And while that might be true, I honestly just think it's time to just throw it out there. Say what, Pete Walker?

He’s a bright guy and he knows how well he responded last year and he pitched well out of the bullpen and can certainly have a nice career doing what he was doing. But I know his aspirations have always been higher. I think he feels like he’s close to that again and I certainly can’t blame him for wanting to do it. I think he always saw himself as a top-notch, front-line starter in the major leagues so to kind of put yourself in the bullpen and accept that, the way he’s feeling I can understand why he wants to do it. I certainly hope that’s the case and he turns into that front-line starter.” 

I have no expectations. Seemingly every pundit picked the Jays to finish last, which is entirely possible, but the same ones picked the Jays to finish first and we all know how that turned out.

Relax and let it ride. We'll always have Adam Lind's spring training beard.