Jon Rauch is the clear favorite to be the opening day closer as both Frank Francisco who has an injured pectoral muscle but Dr. James Andrews found no structural damage and will most likely to begin the season on the disabled list. This is likely to mean that Francisco will be touch and go for a while where the question will be when will he be ready to pitch for the Blue Jays in a regular season game and the question will be asked until he does so it may be a distraction. Also Octavio Dotel is sidelined with a hamstring injury which could keep him from pitching for a while and a hamstring injury can be a lingering injury and can last a short amount of time or a long process to get him healthy.
Jon Rauch will be the starting day closer for the Toronto Blue Jays and his past in this position as last season he was with the Minnesota Twins and had 25 closing opportunities and ended up with 21 saves and last season he had a ratio of over 3 to 1 strikeout to walks. He will need to get his hits (61) to inning pitched (57.2) down if he is going to a solid closer and keep the confidence of the starters who may feel that they can not make a mistake during the game and almost having to complete the game. The problem with added pressure to the starters can have a compounding effect as if they try harder to focus on being almost perfect with every pitch means when a batter gets a hit off the pitcher and means that the pitcher will try even harder to get the next batter out and it can get the pitcher off his game or even getting hurt.
In the end as a Blue Jay fan I'm hoping Jon Rauch gets some early chances to saving games because we will only know if he can get the job done by watching him pitch under pressure and seeing if he can get the job done and lets hope there are 3 run games to start the season as it will be less pressure than a single run lead.
Lets have a good season Blue Jays as the season starts next Friday
Tom Mehegan
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