[Dion]

Stroman can't wait for game 5 to start

He owns teams in the Rogers Centre, and as teammate Josh Donaldson put it Tuesday: "He wants to be in the spotlight; he looks for it. "He’s good to play behind for a team like us, because he’s going to get a lot of ground balls when he’s on. The key for us will be to play good defence behind him."

Stroman bounced around the clubhouse Tuesday, saying that if he had to measure his excitement level on scale of one to 10, "I’d probably say it’s a 10 right now, and I can only imagine tomorrow." Thinking back to his long rehabilitation, Stroman remarked: "It’s a perfect situation that kind of played out in my head. And it’s happening … and I mean … I get the chills now even just thinking about being in the position I’m in now."

Price, who still maintained that he would be available in some capacity on Wednesday even though Gibbons said: "Don’t count on it." In the dugout later, Gibbons spoke quietly about the role Price had played in getting the Blue Jays to the post-season, and there was a hint that the manager was concerned about how worn down Price might be. "We don’t get here without him," Gibbons said, making clear that even though Price is not under contract for next year he didn’t feel he had carte blanche to abuse the pitcher’s arm. Gibbons smiled when it was suggested the tip-off would be whether Price elects to watch the game from the bullpen or dugout. "Yeah, that would be," he said.

Gibbons also offered another alternative out of the blue, that being Estrada, the Game 3 starter and prohibitive Game 1 starter for the AL Championship Series (should the Blue Jays make it that far). Perhaps Gibbons was simply running up a trial balloon to muck around with the mind of his counterpart with the Rangers, Jeff Banister, but Estrada has had ample experience as a reliever – he was a swingman with the Milwaukee Brewers last season, and made six relief appearances for the Blue Jays this year before moving into the rotation – and he is able to warm up quickly. Estrada threw just 89 pitches in Game 3, a 5-1 win, and has equal splits against left-handers and right-handers (an opponents average of .203 against lefties and .204 against righties this season) and might be available for a couple of outs. Estrada has had success against Choo and Prince Fielder, albeit with a relatively small sample size.

http://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/mlb...est-right-now/