For most of the offseason the assumption was that Jose Bautista would be Toronto’s everyday third baseman--he’s still listed there on the official MLB.com depth chart, in fact--but today the Blue Jays announced that Bautista will be moving to right field full time.
That also means Edwin Encarnacion will be the starting third baseman after initially being pegged for first base or designated hitter because of his career-long struggles defensively. According to John Lott of the National Post the Blue Jays are hoping offseason weight loss leads to a better glove at the hot corner.
In addition to those two switches Juan Rivera will go from right field to designated hitter and Adam Lind will be the everyday first baseman. All in all it’s probably relatively close to a wash defensively, because while Encarnacion is pretty terrible at third base Bautista wasn’t particularly great there, and Bautista is an upgrade over Rivera in the outfield.
