Prospects work to stay with big club
11/18/2005TORONTO -- Thursday brought snow to Toronto for the first time this fall. It was only a few flakes, but a definite sign of the white winter still to come before the Blue Jays are back in town. So what better time to start talking about Winter League baseball?
Winter ball is certainly what catcher Guillermo Quiroz and outfielder Alex Rios are talking about these days. While Toronto watches the flakes fly, Quiroz and Rios are watching fly balls in Venezuela and Puerto Rico, respectively.
For the 23-year-old Quiroz, billed as Toronto's catcher of the future, the winter stint with his hometown Zulia Aguilas is a chance to play more after three seasons wracked by injuries.
For the 24-year-old Rios, who was MVP of the Puerto Rican league when he played for the Caguas Criollos two years ago, it's a chance to sharpen his skills and stay loose over the offseason.
"Both of these guys just want to play," said Blue Jays GM J.P. Ricciardi. "One needs to play, and one wants to play. They're still young players; they're still developing."
As befits a catcher, Quiroz's list of injuries is long and painful. He missed time with a collapsed lung in 2003 and spent seven weeks on the sidelines with a fractured finger in 2004.
Things got even worse in Spring Training 2005, when he tore a muscle in his right shoulder. He battled his way back to health only to suffer another collapsed lung, eventually winding up in surgery to correct the problem.
But Quiroz worked his way to Toronto by late August, appearing in 36 games with the Jays, then tuned up for Zulia by batting .294 in 15 games with the Peoria Saguaros of the Arizona Fall League.
Quiroz made an impression on Toronto skipper John Gibbons, a former catcher, with improved game-calling skills during his time in the Majors this summer. If Quiroz wants to make more of a name for himself next summer, he'll use the winter to work on extending the flashes of power he's shown from time to time.
The stocky Quiroz, who hit 20 home runs at Double-A in 2003, had six homers in 39 games with Zulia last season.
"Every time I get hurt and try to come back, my timing is off," he said when asked about his power stroke on the last day of the 2005 season.
"I'm trying to catch up with fastballs. It's tough."
Rios hasn't been able to regain the power he had in the winter of 2003-04, when he hit .348 with 12 homers and 37 RBIs in Puerto Rico, then drove home 11 more runs during the playoffs.
But the lanky outfielder with the rifle arm hit 10 homers for Toronto in 2005, a vast improvement over his debut season.
Still, Rios looked rough around the edges at times last summer. In mid-September, he was pulled in the second inning of a game against New York for failing to hustle on a routine fly ball. But the youngster learned his lesson quickly and came back strong, batting .357 over his final 10 games.
Another Blue Jay playing baseball this winter is Double-A farmhand Steve Andrade, one of two closers in the bullpen for Team USA at an Olympic qualifying tournament going on this week in Arizona.
Source: http://toronto.bluejays.mlb.com/
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