DUNEDIN, Fla. — The Toronto Blue Jays went from practising to play baseball to actually playing practice baseball with their Grapefruit League opener, and Eric Lauer was hyped.
Toeing the rubber in a competitive setting, even a mere spring training contest, gave the left-hander with he called “restless leg syndrome,” during his clean inning of work in Saturday’s 3-0 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies.
“I was kind of laughing when I came off,” he said after allowing one hit with a strikeout. “My legs just kept shaking — I was just too excited. You finally get back to what we do all year, finally get out there, you can compete and you just get a little overexcited and you’ve got to get your legs back under you. Towards the end there, I was able to get back under control.”
A similar phenomenon strikes the 30-year-old on occasion “randomly throughout the year, too,” which he describes as “fun because having that anxiety means it still matters to you.”
In multiple ways this is a spring that really matters for Lauer, a pending free agent at season’s end whose market will be shaped somewhat both by how he’s used and how he performs.
Last year, Lauer showed he can handle a swingman role by helping stabilize the Blue Jays rotation early with 15 vital starts, before being moved to the bullpen for the season’s final month, putting team before self. This spring, he’s being stretched out as a starter again but the Blue Jays rotation is a crowded place — even with Shane Bieber in the midst of a delayed buildup — so where exactly he fits is TBD.
“Being able to lock in mentally and physically as a starter is what’s best for me, just because it’s what I normally do, it’s how I normally prepare, I know where I’m supposed to be at certain times,” said Lauer. “The whole bouncing back and forth in last year kind of hurt me in the long run, not physically, but in my standing, I guess. I’d really like to perform and do what I did last year, show that I can start and hopefully maintain starting.”
The standing is a reference to his recent arbitration loss to the Blue Jays, when the panel awarded him the team’s $4.4 million offer rather than his $5.75 million ask. It was a rare case in which a player who was returning to the system after a couple of seasons away received a cut on his previous arbitration salary ($5.075 million) and “the fact that I ended the year in the bullpen is probably what lost me my case,” he said.
In that way, his selflessness a season ago may very well have penalized him financially in arbitration’s comparable-based process, yet another example of the system’s inability to assess and reward elements of a player’s total contributions.
Free agency, on the other hand, is a different beast, one driven by performance projections and team need and there’s always a market for starting pitchers. The best thing Lauer can do this spring is pitch well enough to force the Blue Jays’ hand.
“We’ve told and him he knows that we want to stretch him out like a traditional starter and to have that option is great, knowing that he can be a little bit flexible,” said manager John Schneider. “We know that’s really, really beneficial and any club would say that. But we want to get him up to a normal starter workload. If we can get up to like 75 pitches by the end of camp, that’s what we’re shooting for, and if we have to adjust, we adjust. He’s going into this saying I want to be one of the starters and if that’s the case, that’s the case. And if it’s not, we’re all ready to pivot.”
One leg-shaking inning in and that process is underway.
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Watch Blue Jays in spring training on Sportsnet
The Blue Jays begin their ramp up to the 2026 with spring training action in Florida. Sportsnet will broadcast 23 spring training games on TV and Sportsnet+.
OKAMOTO DEBUTS
Like all the Blue Jays headed to the World Baseball Classic, Kazuma Okamoto is going to be busy early in camp and he made his Grapefruit League debut Saturday, going 0-for-2 with a nice defensive play at third base.
That fancy glovework came in the second inning, when Rafael Marchan hit a weak chopper to third that Okamoto charged, scooped and relayed on the run to first for the out.
“He’s got a good clock, he’s really got good hands, athletic play,” said Schneider. “Like what I saw.”
Signed to a $60-million, four-year deal during the off-season, the long-time Yomuiri Giants star is in the midst of a crash-course transition to North America, one that will be interrupted at the end of the month when he joins Japan for the WBC.
He’s spent a lot of time working and talking with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and George Springer, among others, saying the duo “have been a huge help.”
“They’ve been talking a lot about not just fielding but hitting and baserunning as well,” Okamoto through interpreter Yusuke Oshima. “It’s good to get a lot of advice from them.”
ROGERS GETS ROLLING
Since 2020, Tyler Rogers leads all relievers with 403 games and 406.1 innings, and on the first day of games there he was, throwing tidy second that included four grounders with exit velocities of 83.3, 83.9, 86.7 and 82.1 m.p.h.
“I was joking with him after he came out, I said, ‘About 75 of those this year,’ and he said, ‘No, probably more,’” said Schneider. “He’s got a good plan. He’s been doing it for a long time. And that was kind of like the perfect inning for him, 17 pitches, a couple groundballs. He’s been built up for this and this is his normal spring.”
Rogers appeared in 81 games last year, 77 the year before and 80 in 2021, so 75 indeed may be a touch light. His durability, combined with his success, prompted the Blue Jays to guarantee him $37 million over three years, believing his unique submarine delivery will add a new tool for their bullpen.
How his pitching style factors into his durability is unclear.
“He’s got a really good idea of how to keep himself available. It’s not max effort,” said Schneider. “I know we talk about it, you think guys that throw like that are always available, but you’ve got to monitor them. But he’s at the point in his career where he knows how to step on the gas or back off. It’s a manager’s dream, really, when you have a funky look that you can kind of count on every day.”
MACKO DIALS IT UP
Adam Macko’s first big-league camp with the Blue Jays last spring was derailed by knee surgery, so his Grapefruit League debut didn’t come until Saturday, when he touched 97.4 m.p.h. during two clean innings.
“First one, finally,” the Canadian lefty said with a smile after. “Felt good, felt composed. Wasn’t really focused too much on the results, wanted to be in the zone and get a good first outing in.”
Macko, who will pitch for Canada at the WBC, sat 95 with his fastball over two innings, which puts him on track for the tournament.
At the same time, “it is still very early, so I do want to be conscious of that and be aware of how long the season is,” said Macko. “That is definitely a good sign that it’s in there. And I’m expecting there to still be some ups and downs with velo as it is with any ramp-up. But if it’s there, I’m very happy about it and it shows the work I put in this off-season was put in the right spots.”
QUOTEABLE
“It’s kind of back and forth. You like that we finished in a good spot, but it still really hurts not getting that last one. There’s a little extra drive to not let that happen again, but at the same time, you’ve got to be proud of what we did last year. You’ve got to soak up the good things that we did and the good season we had overall. But then also having that little chip on your shoulder, knowing we’ve got to do a little bit better, we’ve to got get a little better every day and keep rolling with that.” — Lauer on getting to the World Series but losing Game 7.
