The Blue Jays four, full season, minor league clubs opened their 2011 seasons over the weekend, including their triple-A affiliate the Las Vegas 51s. The highest club on the Jays minor league system opened their season in the Pacific Coast League with some of the Jays top minor league talent including Brett Lawrie, Darin Mastroianni, Eric Thames and David Cooper. The pitching staff includes several former major leaguers, most notably Chad Cordero. As the season wears on the big club will call on several players from Vegas to join the club for varying lengths of time.

The 51s opened the season last Thursday night in Fresno against the San Francisco Giants affiliate and split the four game series with back to back wins on Friday and Saturday. The 51s opened with a lopsided 11-1 loss that saw starting pitcher, Brad Mills, go seven innings and allow just two runs, one earned, on seven hits. Mills didn’t walk a batter and struckout seven before giving way to Josh Roenicke in the eighth. Roenicke gave up four runs on five hits and didn’t retire a batter. Cordero followed him in the eighth and gave up four runs of his own but did manage to get out the inning.

On Friday, starter, Randy Boone, turned in a nice start to his season with a five inning, scoreless, two hit appearance. He also struck out five and walked just one batter. Offensively, four 51s had two hit days, including Lawrie who went two for four with a pair of doubles and a walk and Thames who had a double and a walk. Saturday brought a rough outing from starting pitcher, Luis Perez, who gave up four earned runs on four hits with three walks in five innings. The bullpen picked him up with four shutout innings and the 51s hitters pushed across fourteen runs to get the win. Shortstop, Chris Woodward, had two hits including a home run, Lawrie had another two hit day this time with one of them being a triple and Cooper went four for five with a double.

Fresno took the series finale on Sunday with an 8-5 victory. Only two of the eight Fresno runs were earned as the 51s defense committed four errors. The five pitchers, including starter Mike MacDonald, didn’t help their cause much either as they all walked at least one batter and seven in total. On the bright side, Thames and Woodward had two hits and a walk a piece and Mastroianni went three for four. Monday saw the 51s start a four game set with the Oakland A’s triple-A club in Sacramento, coming out on top with a 6-3 win. Thames reached base five times on two hits, including a homer, and three walks, two intentional.

After Cordero went three innings and allowed three runs Sean Henn, Casey Janssen, and Rommie Lewis followed with six innings of shutout relief on three hits, three walks and five strikeouts. Janssen went two innings and struckout three batters with no walks and one hit. The 51s will play Sacramento three more times before heading home for the first time with a four game series against Fresno that starts on Friday. They’ll then welcome Salt Lake in for another four game set at home.

The first five games left Vegas with a 3-2 record tied for second place with Fresno in the Pacific-South Division, which they share with Fresno, Sacramento and Reno. Overall, the 51s are eighth in both runs scored at six per game and runs allowed at five-point-four runs per game. According to StatCorner, Thames has been the 51s best hitter early on with a .524 wOBA having hit .500 through five games with a .333 isolated power and he’s picked up five walks already. Brad Mills had the best outing in the first run through the rotation with a 1.29 tRA in his one start and Janssen leads the ‘pen with a .66 tRA.

As the season gets a little further on I’ll be adding more features to the weekly update, including a weekly Brett Lawrie watch, and some tables with a host of stats for the team’s offensive and pitching leaders as well, including several from StatsCorner, a site I strongly recommend checking out for all the Jays minor leaguers you want to keep  tabs on.

Here’s links to some team specific sites you might want to bookmark if you want to keep up with the 51s throughout the course of the season:

Baseball-Reference’s 2011 Pacific Coast League Main Page

Baseball-Reference’s 2011 Las Vegas 51s Main Page

StatCorner’s 2011 Las Vegas 51s Main Page

Official Las Vegas 51s Home Page

Official Las Vegas Schedule w/game recap and boxscore links

If there’s anything you’d like to see here in this update each week, leave a comment below and I’ll try to work it in for you.