Toronto Blue Jays baseball team

BLUE JAYS 6, TIGERS 4at Dunedin, Fla.Friday, Feb. 27 Tigers at the plate: Timo Perez provided the only early offense, driving in Mike Hessman with a groundout in the second. Detroit was then quiet until the seventh, when Donnie Kelly hit a solo home run, and Alex Avila hit a two-run single to draw the [...]

DUNEDIN, Fla. — Brad Mills picked a fine time to become a professional baseball player. In another world, under another set of circumstances, Mills might still be searching for work, armed only with a civil engineering degree and a 23-year-old's sense of what's possible. But civil engineering firms depend upon healthy budgets, and healthy budgets [...]

DUNEDIN, Fla. — Excluding four abbreviated starts as a 33-year-old Minor Leaguer and 12 forgettable relief appearances that same year in Triple-A, Matt Clement entered Friday having not pitched in a "real" game since 2006. Three years can wear on a guy. So imagine Clement's unpreparedness when Tigers outfielder Curtis Granderson, one of the fastest [...]

BLUE JAYS 6, PHILLIES 2at Clearwater, Fla.Thursday, Feb. 26 Blue Jays at the plate: Toronto scored two runs in the fifth inning and four runs in the eighth inning. Travis Snider and Jason Lane hit back-to-back home runs in the fifth off Justin Lehr to give the Blue Jays a 2-1 lead. Third baseman Scott [...]

CLEARWATER, Fla. — The common worry amongst younger World Baseball Classic players is that their participation in the event will affect their status back home. It's been cause for dozens of players to skip the Classic in 2006 and '09, preferring to stay in big league camp and compete for roster spots or starting jobs. [...]

CLEARWATER, Fla. — For a brief time on Thursday, while the ball still hung in the air, Travis Snider appeared ready to make his mark on Bright House Field. Snider had just launched a Carlos Carrasco pitch deep to right field, and he was tracking its flight when an unseasonably fierce wind knocked it back [...]

YANKEES 6, BLUE JAYS 1 at Dunedin, Fla. Wednesday, Feb. 25 Yankees at the plate: Third baseman Alex Rodriguez, making his first appearance in a game since his admission of using performance-enhancing drugs from 2001-03, belted a two-run home run in his first official at-bat against the Jays. Outfielder Brett Gardner opened the game by [...]

DUNEDIN, Fla. — Ricky Romero was supposed to be in the Blue Jays' rotation by now. He was supposed to breeze through Toronto's farm system and become an integral part of the organization's future. Baseball doesn't always care about the plans. On Wednesday, nearly four years removed from being the first pitcher selected in the [...]

DUNEDIN, Fla. — Brett Cecil had more things to worry about on Wednesday than Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez. The young pitching prospect is trying to win a spot in the Blue Jays' starting rotation and was being handed the ball in the club's Grapefruit League opener, a 6-1 Toronto loss. That doesn't mean that Cecil [...]

DUNEDIN, Fla. — Blue Jays manager Cito Gaston can only evaluate so much from behind a batting cage. That has been his primary perch for much of the past two weeks during the early stages of Spring Training, and he's ready to move on to the next step. The Blue Jays will host the New [...]