BRADENTON, Fla. – By and large, spring training lineups don’t mean very much, often based more on who needs at-bats than who ends up hitting where. But Saturday afternoon, in their penultimate Grapefruit League game, the Toronto Blue Jays rolled out a familiar configuration versus Paul Skenes and the Pittsburgh Pirates with a little more significance behind it.

George Springer at leadoff with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. at the three-hole, as he prefers. Nathan Lukes in between them at two with fellow lefty Addison Barger at four, followed by Alejandro Kirk, Daulton Varsho, Kazuma Okamoto, Ernie Clement and Andres Gimenez.

“It’s a pretty good idea of how I'm thinking about it, how we're thinking about it,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said ahead of an 8-3 loss. “Happens to be a really good starter for them in Paul, and how we can best combat that. We're not looking at results, but at how the lineup flows. And how we start may not be how we finish. There's still a little bit of, I don't want to say unknown with Kaz, but I don't want to pigeonhole him in the seven-hole by any means. I don't want to pigeonhole Ernie anywhere. A lot will depend on the starter. But I feel good about the top six, and depending on who's in there, there could be a little movement between two and six, something like that. Just seeing how this rolls out.”

The Blue Jays didn’t manage much against Skenes, who allowed one hit and three walks with five strikeouts over four shutout innings, but they did build a couple of innings against the reigning NL Cy Young Award winner. Vladimir Guerrero Jr., for instance, narrowly missed a three-run homer in the third when he launched a 2-2 changeup out at 108.3 m.p.h. just foul, before he struck out on an elevated 96.4 m.p.h. heater on the next pitch. 

Regardless, the reps against a pitcher of that calibre are what matter most........

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