And Down The Stretch They Come

With only a few days left until the Blue Jays have to officially announce their Opening Day roster, I thought it would be fun to sift through the carnage that is the 25 Man Roster Challenge and see where all the competitors are at. Trying to guess the players at the start of camp who will compose the team by the end of camp always proves to be much more difficult than it seems.

From what I can tell, the magic number appears to be two, meaning that if your ballot contains just two mistakes, you're probably out of the running unless something absolutely major goes down.

Here are the teams left with only one player wrong:

Team Gregor

Team Jason

Team Jeremy

Team Clint

Team Drock

Team Ant 

Team Man With The Golden Arm

Team Jordan

The first six ballots are identical and they basically hinge on well being of one Ben Francisco's hamstring. The skeptic in me thinks that Francisco is over at the Minor League camp playing games not because he can lead off every inning in a controlled environment as we are being told but in fact he's there because the team wants to back date his upcoming DL trip.

My team is still in the running as I've got the out of options mirage known as Luis Valbuena making the club instead of Francisco. I never really understood the thinking behind keeping a fifth OF and it may ending up winning me the Challenge.

Team Jordan has hitched his wagon to the dark horse known as Aaron Laffey. Still a possibility. I guess.

All the other remaining ballots appear to be left leaning against the wall eye fucking the pretty girl while she dances with your buddy.

UPDATE:

The Blue Jays lineup for today's game against the Tigers is out and Francisco is in it hitting in the three spot. Sooooooooo there goes that theory.

Davis-CF
Vizquel-SS
Francisco-RF
Lind-1B
Thames-LF
Mathis-C
Valbuena-2B
Knecht-DH
Ahrens-3B
Cecil-SP