Toronto Blue Jays’ Daniel Norris helping ease the loss of Stroman

Top ranked organizational prospect of the Toronto Blue Jays, southpaw Daniel Norris, is helping to ease the loss of Marcus Stroman for 2015. Norris picked up his second win of the spring on Wednesday and improved to 2-0.

In his latest outing, manager John Gibbons stretched Norris out over six innings against the Orioles where he delivered in fine form. He allowed only a single earned run, three hits, zero walks while striking out seven against a starting lineup that featured the likes of Manny Machado, Steve Pearce, Adam Jones, Delmon Young, Chris Davis and J.J. Hardy for three at-bats a piece.

The one-time Paul Bunyan-like Norris recently reached cult celebrity status on the internet after going viral for living out if his 1978 Volkswagon Westfalia during the offseason. In spite of proliferating the whole laid back, surfer vibe lifestyle for a time, Norris’ approach to the game of baseball appears to be anything but easy going.

In his previous spring outing against the Tampa Bay Rays, Norris also shone bright. He pitched 5.2 innings of one-run ball while walking one and striking out five. The only time he has been dusted up a bit was in his second preseason appearance versus the Detroit Tigers, having allowed three earned runs through 2.0 IP.

While the onus will not fall solely on Norris and fellow top pitching prospect Aaron Sanchez to offset the loss of Stroman, it should be comforting to Jays fans to see Norris working so efficiently — almost effortlessly — this spring. In total, he has thrown only 134 pitches over his five spring outings amassing 18.2 innings. 113 of those pitches have been for strikes.

Source: MLB.com

Of course, this is still spring ball, so everything must be taken with a grain of salt. However, Norris is not a seasoned veteran trying to tweak a few things here and there or possibly add a new pitch to his repertoire. He is a rookie pitching with a rookie’s mentality of bringing his best stuff to the diamond in order to make the Opening Day roster, ideally with a spot in the rotation. Norris has to be treating every opportunity as if it were the regular season.

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Overall, Daniel Norris’ spring ERA sits at 2.41. You can tell from the stats chart above that his overall numbers look very promising. Mark Buehrle, R.A. Dickey and Drew Hutchison aren’t going anywhere. With Marco Estrada struggling more so than Sanchez, it’s looking fairly likely that the Toronto Blue Jays could be giving the ball to two rookies in the rotation every five days once the regular season begins.

While the learning curve from Triple-A to MLB is typically tougher for hitter’s than it is pitcher’s, there should be some hiccups along the way. The biggest of which might be the fact that both Norris and Sanchez could be on an inning count for their first full season in the pros. Fans just hope it’s not a similar repeat of the Washington Nationals’ 2012 situation. Time will tell. The two pitched 90.2/124.1 and 86.1/100.1 innings in 2013 and 2014, respectively.

With a former Cy Young winner in Dickey and the high baseball IQ of catcher Russell Martin mentoring Norris and Sanchez along the way, anything is possible. Maybe even a 2014 Jacob deGrom-like-performance-in-the-AL-East this-year-kind-of-possible.

Next: Opening Day 2015: Paging Kyle Kendrick, Drew Hutchison