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Marcus Semian may have only spent 1 season in TO, but it will have a much longer lasting effect.

If you’re looking for Bo Bichette and Santiago Espinal around 7:00am on any given day of Toronto Blue Jays spring training, the Florida sun only just beginning to rise somewhere on the horizon, you’ll want to head to the covered infield adjacent the weight room and batting cages at the club’s lavish new player development complex in Dunedin.

And you’ll probably be late. The pair will have been there for some time, taking groundballs, fielding short hops, turning double plays. Drilling footwork, rhythm, timing. Talking reads, approaches, and shifts. Blue Jays infield coach Luis Rivera and coordinator Danny Solano will be there, too, fungo bats in hand, baskets of balls on either side of them, new wrinkles and layers in mind to throw at the young middle infielders they’ve been drilling early each morning for weeks.

“Every day it’s something different,” Espinal said. “Some new conversation about learning how to work around the bases, where to be, how to keep your feet moving, how to prepare, what our position should be in all these different shifts we’ll play during the game. That’s what it’s about. Everything needs to be game ready.”

That’s what Espinal learned from Semien, the career shortstop who transitioned to second base with the Blue Jays last year and, oh, only went out and himself won a gold glove. Espinal watched Semien — a father of three and member of MLBPA’s executive subcommittee during a CBA year, mind you — regularly beat everyone to the park to complete an extensive fielding program that’s been part of his daily routine for over a half-decade.

Espinal saw up close the grinding, assiduous work of a quiet professional that, over years of steady, incremental progress, produces a sensational career like Semien’s. And now he’ll carry it forward wherever the game takes him.

“I'm trying to do the same thing he did,” Espinal says. “And last year we talked about it — how he learned second base so quick. And he told me that's just the amount of work that you have to put in. There’s no shortcut. It’s every day. It doesn't matter if it’s an early game, doesn't matter what city you’re in — always be consistent, always take ground balls. So, I’m just following his lead.”

https://www.sportsnet.ca/mlb/article...lue-jays-camp/