"Why don't you make like Tom Brady"

Yeah, yeah, so Alex comes to Dunedin sporting a 'hawk. Well, actually, it looks more like a traffic stripe than anything else, but that's neither here nor there. I've met and seen a lot of mohawks in my life, both faux and real, and I must say I don't know if I've ever met someone who manages to pull it off with such class. It's a little more Mr. Smith than Tyler Durden, to say the least; apparently the major concern is how it will affect his tan.

I must say, the 'do flies in the face of just about everything I thought I knew about our boy Rios. At the risk of being crucified for levying criticism at this site's namesake in just my second post, a lot of words have come to mind about Rios over the past four seasons and "punk" was never high on the list. "Talented" certainly was, as well as a few less choice words, "soft" being one of the more moderate. I've seen Rios as the guy who occasionally dogs it in the outfield, occasionally doesn't bother to run out a pop-up and on the odd occasion forgets how many outs there are when he's stargazing out there on second.

As recently as last season, I recall damning him as the two-time all-star still prone to rookie mistakes, and pointed to him as the crux of the problem with the Jays clubhouse. (I didn't do this in any public medium, but I think anyone who watched the team closely last year will know what I'm talking about - one particular image sticks out in my mind, of a hobbled Troy Glaus staring out across the diamond in disgust at a stupefied Rios, hands flailing).

On that note, I found Blair's latest insightful. Blair admits that he used to consider Alex a bit of a "slacker," but that he seems to have "matured" quite a bit since 2004, and is now one of Blair's favourites. If we take this insight for anything more than the usual February hyperbole (and given that it's Blair, and it seems to come as a raw moment of honesty, it's tempting to do so), then I'll go along with the sentiment and agree with the fantasy baseball masses in predicting a huge age-27 season. It does sound like he's mashing right now, and I must say, those forearms are HUGE.