1. Brandon Morrow has always been a pitcher with dominating stuff but who has never been able to put the type of consistency together to be as good as he has the potential to be. After his outstanding start in 2012, has he finally turned the corner?

I remember saying prior to the 2011 season that that year was going to be the one Morrow puts it all together, but the addition of a cutter and some mental changes near the tail end of last season set him up for his success this year. Obviously his two shutouts this season have been eye-opening, but he’s pitching as a hybrid between his former self, a power pitcher that racks up strikeouts, and a new type of pitcher, one that now welcomes more contact/ground balls and paces himself better to go deeper into ball games. Morrow’s success has been refreshing, but it’s also, without a doubt, crucial to the Jays making an impact in the AL East either this season or next.

2. Especially when he’s being juxtaposed against Jays starters like Morrow and Ricky Romero, how frustrating is it to watch a guy like Henderson Alvarez who forces groundball after groundball but doesn’t miss any bats? He’s done well in terms of ERA thus far in 2012 but you have to hate his peripherals. Do you think he’ll ever be able to turn that around? (He’s like a Jeremy Hellickson-esque case, but Hellickson strikes out more than double as many guys and forces a crazy amount of pop-ups instead of Alvarez’s outstanding groundball rate.)

Alvarez is definitely an interesting case, considering his inability to miss bats in the minors spurned doubt that he’d ever have a successful career in the Majors. Now he’s arrived in the big leagues and is missing even fewer bats. When he’s on, like his complete-game shutout against the Angels in Anaheim, his command of the strike zone can compensate somewhat for the lack of punchouts, but like in his last few starts when he’s left the ball up and hasn’t mixed up his pitches, he’s been getting hit. He’s working on an out pitch, but he’s going to have to figure things out very soon given the surplus of arms coming up behind him.

3. How excited are you about the Jays’ minor league system which stacks up as one of the best in baseball? Which prospects are you most excited about? We’ve heard about the Jays wanting to emulate the Rays to some extent for a while, but with guys like Daniel Norris, Aaron Sanchez, Justin Nicolino, and Noah Syndergaard moving up the ranks in addition to the young core of pitchers the Jays currently have in the big leagues do you think the Jays have a chance to create a level of pitching depth anywhere near as deep as the Rays’?

Prospects are really my thing, so I’m quite excited about the Blue Jays’ minor league system. General manager Alex Anthopoulos’ expansion of his scouting department has been a key reason why the Jays’ farm system has gone from one of the worst in baseball (28th) to one of the best, and adopting a different draft strategy — drafting more high school players and taking more risks to find those high-ceiling players — from previous GM J.P. Ricciardi has been another big plus.

The four pitchers you mentioned in Norris, Sanchez, Nicolino and Syndergaard are definite gems in the system, and I think Sanchez is the best pitching prospect in the Jays’ system right now, which says a lot. I watched both him and Nicolino pitch two weeks ago, and his stuff was just incredible — consistently mid-90s fastball with late movement, a changeup that projects to be a plus pitch, and a plus-plus, absolutely effortless curveball that’s the best in the Jays’ system.

I was a catcher when I was younger, so I have a tendency to follow catching prospects more closely than any other position (exlcuding pitchers), since I love everything about the position. Luckily the Jays are quite loaded in catching prospects, and not just because of top prospect Travis d’Arnaud. Other guys like A.J. Jimenez, Carlos Perez and Santiago Nessy all come to mind. Other position players I’m keeping tabs on are obviously more well-known guys like center fielders Anthony Gose and Jake Marisnick, but lesser-known guys as well like Matt Dean, Michael Crouse and Andy Burns.As far as other pitching prospects, Adonys Cardona, Tom Robson, Sean Nolin and David Rollins are some intriguing names.

The Q&A had to be a little brief this time, but we’d like to thank Jared for his answers. I also answered some question for Jared and JaysJournal about the Rays here.

Price wasn’t overpowering over the first two innings, allowing a hit in each inning with just 1 strikeout, but he was able to keep the Jays off the board. But things came apart a bit in the 3rd. Rajai Davis hit a groundball to short to begin the inning, and even though the speedy Davis was going to beat out the play, Elliot Johnson made a bad throw to first base, allowing Davis to go to second base. But Price rebounded to strike out Kelly Johnson and force Yunel Escobar to ground out to 3rd. If he could get Jose Bautista, he would be out of the inning. Price and Molina elected to waive their usual shift against Bautista, which features three infielders on the left side of the infield, as they worked away against Bautista. But Price missed in with a fastball, and Bautista found a hole up the middle with second baseman Will Rhymes in his usual second base position, scoring Davis to give the Jays a 1-0 lead. Two pitches later, Price missed up and out over the plate with a fastball to the red-hot Edwin Encarnacion, and Encarnacion slammed a 2-run homer to left-center, and suddenly the Blue Jays had a 3-0 lead. It was a frustrating series of events for Price as two bad pitches in a three pitch span cost him three runs.

Price fought through the tough 3rd to give the Rays a solid outing. (Credit: Tom Szczerbowski-US PRESSWIRE)

The Rays managed a bunt hit by Matt Joyce in the first and an error on the play by Toronto starter Henderson Alvarez to advance him to second base. But Alvarez escaped that threat and he also avoided damage in the third inning after Rajai Davis gunned down Ben Zobrist at the plate on a B.J. Upton single. After getting a lead in the bottom of the third inning, Alvarez managed to work around a Brett Lawrie error in the 4th. But he finally let up a run in the 5th, allowing a Will Rhymes leadoff single and three batters later, after Rhymes advanced to third on two groundballs, a Ben Zobrist bloop double to pull the Rays within 3-1. Price, meanwhile, got into a groove, retiring 9 in a row following a Brett  Lawrie hit-by-pitch to begin the bottom of the 4th. His efforts finally paid off in the 7th.

Alvarez left a fastball up and away from Sean Rodriguez to begin the inning, and Rodriguez went right with it, driving it to the opposite field. The result was a booming home run to right-center to pull the Rays within a run. The Rays weren’t anywhere near done. After Will Rhymes singled, Jose Molina reached an error, and Elliot Johnson singled before Rhymes scored on yet another Blue Jays error to even the score. After a wild pitch advanced the runners, Ben Zobrist hit a line drive that was knocked down on the infield to load the bases. And then the Rays took the lead on a double play grounder off the bat of B.J. Upton (not exactly climactic) to take a 4-3 lead in the game. Alvarez went 6.2 innings for the Blue Jays, allowing 4 runs, 2 earned, on 10 hits, striking out just 1 while walking none. Sure, he allowed a 15-1 groundout to flyout ratio, but he just allowed far too many balls in play, and eventually it cost him. Price finished off his outing by working around a 2-out Rajai Davis double in the bottom of the 7th to pitch a scoreless inning. He went 7 innings, allowing 3 runs on 6 hits, striking out 6 while walking none. He forced an 11-2 groundout to airout ratio in his own right. After a tough third inning, Price was lights out the rest of the game and left in line for the win.

The Rays got perfect relief from Joel Peralta in the 8th to preserve the 1-run lead and Fernando Rodney lowered his ERA to 0.51 and clinched his 11th save in 11 tries with a 1-2-3 ninth inning with 2 strikeouts as the Rays won the game 4-3, clinching a sweep in the short two-game set and keeping pace with the Orioles for the AL East lead. Price improved to 6-2 with the win while Alvarez (3-3) took the loss. It was a great win for the Rays as Price came back from his one tough inning to pitch a nice game and the Rays took advantage of the extra outs that the Blue Jays gave them to come back and take the lead. The Rays go home to take on the Boston Red Sox, who are coming off a 5-game win streak. Jeremy Hellickson takes on Clay Buchholz on Wednesday night as the Rays look to keep rolling.

The Rays jumped out to an early lead against Blue Jays started Henderson Alvarez, stringing together a single by Ben Zobrist, a walk to Carlos Pena, and an opposite field single by Evan Longoria to take a 1-0 lead before Luke Scott grounded into a double play to end the inning. But Jeremy Hellickson gave the lead right back in the bottom of the inning, allowing a Yunel Escobar single to begin the game and a subsequent Adam Lind double. The Rays offense got going again in the second inning. Matt Joyce was hit by a pitch to begin the inning, and advanced to 2nd base on a Jeff Keppinger groundball before Jose Molina struck out. Sean Rodriguez then hit a line drive that landed in front of Jose Bautista in right field. Joyce attempted to score and Bautista came up throwing. Bautista’s throw was an absolute laser that took a bad hop in front of J.P. Arencibia, allowing Joyce to score, but then the ball bounced up into the left non-throwing shoulder of Alvarez backing up the play, causing him to go down to the ground, and then the ball bounced into the stands. Alvarez was checked out by the Jays trainer but was fine and remained in the game. Rodriguez ended up on 3rd on the play and scored on a Desmond Jennings single to extend the Rays’ lead to 3-1.

Hellickson stranded a runner in the 2nd,  J.P. Arencibia, who reached on a single to break out of a 2 for 32 slide, before working around a walk and yet another Evan Longoria error in the 3rd. But things came apart a little bit in the 4th. With Hellickson not quite in a rhythm but pitching pretty well, Colby Rasmus changed the momentum with a 1-out bunt single. Hellickson then left a fastball too far up to J.P. Arencibia and he drilled an opposite-field RBI double and scored on a Sean Rodriguez throwing error (I still don’t completely trust him defensively at shortstop) to tie the game before Hellickson got Kelly Johnson and Jose Bautista to escape further trouble. But the momentum in the game shifted right back.

Desmond Jennings stepped up to the plate with 1 out having a hit in his previous at-bat but just 2 doubles and no other extra-base hits in 56 plate appearances. But when Alvarez left a first-pitch fastball to Jennings up, Jennings drilled it into the left field seats for his first home run of the year to give the Rays’ a 4-3 lead. Ben Zobrist followed with a walk, and two batters later, Evan Longoria drilled a 3-2 fastball left too high for a 2-run blast to dead center to extend the lead to 6-3. It was Longoria’s first home run since Opening Day.

Hellickson worked around an Edwin Encarnacion double in the bottom of the 5th and got two quick outs in the 6th before walking Yunel Escobar to end his outing. Getting the final out of the inning proved to be a difficult task as Jake McGee and Burke Badenhop both failed to do so, allowing a single and walk respectively, before J.P. Howell allowed a line drive to Adam Lind that, lucky for him and the Rays, landed right in Carlos Pena’s glove. Howell pitched a nice 7th inning, though, striking out 2 while working around a single, and after the Rays stranded Elliot Johnson, who walked a stole a base, in the top of the 8th, Joel Peralta tossed a 1-2-3 bottom of the inning, forcing two groundball outs. The Rays rewarded the great performances of Hellickson, Howell, and Peralta by putting the game away in the top of the 9th.

Desmond Jennings singled to begin the 9th and advanced to 2nd on a Zobrist groundball. Jennings then was credited with a steal of third as he read correctly that a Jason Frasor pitch was going to bounce before it even made to the plate and belatedly sprinted to the 3rd. Pena walked before Evan Longoria drilled his second extra-base hit of the night, a double, to score Jennings and advance Pena to 3rd. Luke Scott followed with another double to make the score of the game 9-3 as both Pena and Longoria scored. Fernando Rodney had warmed up when the game was a save situation and struggled for the first time all year with that the case, but after getting into a bases-loaded, 1 out jam, Rodney forced Brett Lawrie to ground out on a tag play at first, scoring a run, before forcing Colby Rasmus to ground out to end the game as the Rays won 9-4.

Hellickson (2-0) was the winner in the game, going 5.2 innings and allowing 3 runs, 2 earned, on 6 hits, striking out 4 while walking 3. 65 of his 106 pitches were strikes and 9 of his 13 non-strikeout outs were on groundballs, but he could not put away hitters and his defense didn’t help him, leading to his elevated pitch count. According to Brooks Baseball, Hellickson used some variation of his fastball for over two-thirds of his pitches but could not command it well, with his cutter looking especially bad, and his changeup was inconsistent on the night while he used his curveball almost exclusively against Jose Bautista with mild success. Hellickson showed nice movement on his curve at times and he maybe should have used it a few more times than he did, but he was able to battle the struggles he had with his bread and butter, his fastball and changeup, to turn in a good enough outing to win the game. Alvarez (0-1) took the loss, allowing 6 runs on 6 hits in 6.1 innings.

The Rays also got encouraging relief outings from Howell and Joel Peralta, a couple who relievers who struggled mightily to begin the year. If those two can get going, the Rays could have themselves a solid bullpen, with hopefully Jake McGee and Burke Badenhop following suit as well.

A couple of Rays had huge days at the plate as Desmond Jennings went 3 for 5 with  a homer, a stolen base, 2 RBI, and 2 runs scored, while Evan Longoria went 3 for 4 with a homer, a double, 4 RBI, and also 2 runs scored. Jennings and Elliot Johnson each swiped a base to double the Rays’ stolen base total on the year from 2 to 4. Especially with B.J. Upton coming back, expect the Rays’ stolen base total to skyrocket even as their lineup hits well.

The Rays got every facet of their game working right on Thursday night, getting a gutsy outing by Hellickson, nice relief work, great hitting by Jennings and Longoria, and also getting back to Joe Maddon’s brand of baseball with 2 stolen bases. The Rays figured something out these last two games in Toronto and hopefully it’s just the start of a great run. The Rays, with their record currently standing at 7-6, go back home to start a weekend series with the Minnesota Twins beginning on Friday night. Matt Moore takes the hill for his first Tropicana Field start hoping to rebound from a poor start at Fenway and will face off against Twins rookie Liam Hendriks.