reunion<\/a> with Max Scherzer, which Sportsnet colleague Ben Nicholson-Smith reported are picking up, could eventually add another wrinkle to the mix.<\/p>\n\u2022 Working around a shorter off-season: As you may recall, the Blue Jays played an extra month last season, which meant several players carried an extended workload last year. They\u2019ll be mindful of that in the way playing time is distributed during the spring games \u201cwith pitchers, much more so than our position players,\u201d said Schneider. \u201cDefinitely have a benchmark of at-bats for certain guys. Some are less, some are more. Pitchers, you’ll see some guys will be on a little bit different schedule, a little bit later when they get into games, a little bit different ramp up for guys that pitched deep into the World Series. For the position players, they all understood it’s going to be a short off-season. WBC throws a wrinkle in that, obviously, for some guys and want to hit their at-bats for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 WBC absences creates opportunity: Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (Dominican Republic), Ernie Clement (United States), Gimenez (Venezuela), Okamoto (Japan), Alejandro Kirk (Mexico), Adam Macko (Canada), Yariel Rodriguez (Cuba), Jimenez (Panama), R.J. Schreck and C.J. Stubbs (Israel), Willis Cresswall (Britain) and Ismael Munguia (Nicaragua) will all be leaving for the World Baseball Classic in the next week and a half. <\/p>\n
Their absence will give Blue Jays minor-leaguers more reps than usual this spring, each a chance to make an impression. \u201cEspecially the ones that haven’t been in front of the major-league staff before,\u201d said player-development director Joe Sclafani. \u201cWe met with pretty much all of them before camp started, and said, \u2018You’re going to play a lot, start mentally wrapping your brain around that, don’t pressure yourself, but show them what you can do. You’d be surprised at how much the staff will remember some of these spring training moments and performances. It’s not only the performance. It’s how you prepare, it’s how you work, it’s the questions you’re asking. How do you react when you have a tough day? It’s a really unique opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Back to Gimenez, and even last season\u2019s experience aside, shortstop isn\u2019t a new position for him after ascending through the Mets system at the position and not locking in at second base until 2022, his second year with Cleveland.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A major difference between the two spots is that at \u201cshortstop there’s more responsibility because you’re the leader of the infield,\u201d said Gimenez. \u201cI like that responsibility. Obviously for me personally, it’s kind of like a challenge. I did it before. I moved to second and accepted that challenge to get the best numbers I can get to help the team. So at this stage of my career, getting moved again to shortstop, I’m accepting the challenge and embracing it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schneider anticipates the\u00a0switch allowing even more of Gimenez\u2019s abilities to shine through.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis game clock is unbelievable. His knowledge of where everyone is at a given point and thinking a little bit ahead of guys too, is tremendous. That’s where you’ll see it,\u201d he said. \u201cThe skills are the skills. I’ll put him up against anyone at shortstop. I don’t think he’ll be compromised (by the extra toll) at all. But I think you’ll see a little bit more of his in-game awareness and awareness of your opponent and awareness of teammates and where they are around you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DUNEDIN, Fla. \u2013 John Schneider regularly describes Andres Gimenez as one of the best defensive infielders in baseball,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":489374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-489373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/489374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}