Opening Day 2015: Blue Jays go green as season starts
Opening the season with six rookies on your roster is worth noting – or maybe not if two of them weren't even born the last time you were in the playoffs.
The Toronto Blue Jays are the exception to the cliché that every team has a chance on Opening Day, starting a 22nd consecutive season wondering when their next postseason appearance will be.
The Blue Jays expect to be a playoff contender in a season that begins with 14 openers today, but they're also the exception: The lone major league team that hasn't been in the playoffs since the turn of the century.
"We're probably trying to defy the odds a little bit," says Toronto manager John Gibbons, whose team will get today's first swing – at Yankee Stadium in one of 11 openers being played the traditional way, in the afternoon. Three others will be played at night; the Cardinals and Cubs opened at Wrigley Field on Sunday night.
The defending champion San Francisco Giants, winners of three of the past five World Series - though no team has won back-to-back titles since 2000 -- have the last start, 9:40 ET at Arizona.
Today's games also mark the rollout of baseball's new pace-of-play rules, aimed at shaving minutes off between-innings breaks and seconds off hitters' and pitchers' movements in the batters' box and on the mound.
But it's Toronto that's stretched the "everyone has hope" mantra to the limit. Ending their drought might not be such a long shot for a team that's added Russell Martin and Josh Donaldson to the likes of Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion and R.A. Dickey.
But the six rookies include two in the starting lineup – second baseman Devon Travis and center fielder Dalton Pompey – and two in the pitching rotation – Daniel Norris and Aaron Sanchez. The oldest of those four is Travis, who at 24 was just 2 when Toronto won the 1993 World Series.
The ones not yet born then are 20-year-old relievers Miguel Castro and Roberto Osuna, who even Gibbons admits are surprises on his roster.
"It's never easy with so many young guys at this level," Gibbons says. "They're good. They have a chance to be real good. I'm pretty excited. We think we're ready to go but we have to find out. A real good start would be helpful."
Toronto will play all of its foes in a wide-open AL East in April, with 19 of its first 22 games and 28 of 35 against division opponents.
In fact, 24 of the 30 series that will be played in the majors between now and the end of this week are intra-division matchups.
"I think it will be a competitive division," Gibbons says of the AL East, where everyone from 2014 winner Baltimore to the Yankees and their abundant story lines have legitimate hope but worrisome questions.
"Most teams have never seen our young guys," he says. "Hopefully that gives us a little advantage until they figure them out a little bit. We're gambling that they're ready and going to do a good job for us."
Just some of the unknowns of a new season.
GALLERY: Opening-day starters