Thursday Commentary: Play Ball!
(Listen daily for the RP Commentary on the All New Hits 98 CKHD & LTD Radio)
Play ball!
If you’re a baseball enthusiast, today is akin to Christmas Day.
It’s opening day across Major League Baseball, and our Toronto Blue Jays open the 2024 season at the Tampa Bay Rays. It’s a 4:10 pm Eastern first pitch.
I’ve been following this Jays off-season and spring training with a lot of interest, and some amusement, as Toronto chases its first World Series title since 1993.
I’ve been reading the USA Today newspaper for decades and in today’s Power Rankings, they’ve got the Jays ranked 6th! The only American League East opponent ranked ahead of them is Baltimore, while the Yankees are listed at 10th.
With some good fortune, good play and good managing, there’s no reason to think this team won’t be in the hunt for a pennant. After that, who knows?
On the flipside, for whatever reason, there’s a lot of pessimism among the Jays fanbase across Canada. In fact in a recent poll of RP Show viewers, the vast majority of voters picked Toronto to finish 4th or 5th in the division.
There’s growing criticism of this regime of President Mark Shapiro and GM Ross Atkins, who’ve been in charge since 2016, and initially I wasn’t a fan of their moves either.
The Jays were hanging pennants and winning playoff games with a gang that included Jose Bautista, Josh Donaldson, GM Alex Anthopolous and skipper John Gibbons.
Then these guys came in and cleaned house.
But they’ve been in the playoffs for the past several years, built a very exciting team, and really isn’t that all you can ask?
If you’re them, all you can ask is a chance to do your talking on the field.
That starts today.
That’s today’s Rod Pedersen Commentary
(The Rod Pedersen Show airs daily at 12 pm & 5 pm on Game+TV, WQEE Radio, Podcast & YouTube Live)
Blue Jays have same problem as Riders…….incompetent management right to the top! Atkins and Shapiro have traded away Gurriel, Morena, Hernandez for Varsho and Swanson, and then last year they went looking for right handed batting power!! Come on!! And O’Day let TWO GC winning quarterbacks go……and for two years did NOTHING about a coach whom had obviously lost the dressing room. So not wasting any time on either of those teams this year…….until they get rid of their respective presidents and GMS.