Day 21 of Pirates spring training: news and notes

• The Pirates will face the Toronto Blue Jays at 1:05 at McKechnie Field in Bradenton, FLA.

You can watch the game for free at home today MLB.tv.

ROOT Sports (formally FSN Pittsburgh) will air the game today –the first of four spring training games this year.

• James McDonald will start for the Bucs, followed by Joel Hanrahan, Chris Resop, Aaron Thompson, Daniel McCutchen, Justin Wilson, Jeff Locke, and Justin Thomas.

Ricky Romero will start for the Blue Jays.

• Dusty Brown, who the Pirates signed as a minor league free agent this offseason, has spent the past 10 years in the Red Sox organization. This spring, he has been getting familiar with his new pitching staff.

“The young guys in camp really have good stuff,” Brown said. “In comparison to the Red Sox, as far as the young pitchers go, there are better arms with a lot more velocity here. I’m excited to see where they all go and how things end up. I think there is potential to be a very good staff in a couple of years.”

• With a few weeks remaining in spring training, the Bucs season opener is on the road this year in Chicago. Manager Clint Hurdle is aware of the horrible road record (17-64) from last season and is preparing to change it this year.

“We’ve definitely had long conversations with the front office, and we’ve got some plans that we’ve just barely started scratching the surface on,” he said. “More talk will ramp up the last two weeks of spring training when we cut the club down to size. We’re going to approach things differently in some areas. One of the traps players can fall into, and it’s not their fault, but awareness can help, that at home you have a scheduled routine. Especially if you’re married and have kids, and if not you still have a routine. The luxuries on the road where you can roll out of bed and go to the park, you can eat. … We’re going to try to find ways to get them up a little earlier, get them moving a little earlier, get our preparation done a little more succinctly on the road, find more time for ourselves to prepare, maybe a workout pattern we’re going to implement on the road to make us more comfortable in visiting cities. We’ve got a plan in place.”

Blue Jays

Lineup: Patterson CF, Escobar SS, Bautista 3B, Snider DH, Encarnacion 1B,Thames LF, Davis RF, Aprencibia C, McCoy 2B

Pitchers: Romero, Rauch, Francisco, Villanueva, Stewart 

Pirates

Lineup: Wimberly SS, Ciriaco 2B, McCutchen CF, Alvarez 3B, Diaz LF, Pearce RF, Fields 1B, Brown C, McDonald P

Pitchers: McDonald, Hanrahan, Resop, Thompson, D. McCutchen, Wilson, Locke, Thomas

**The Pirates will for the first time this spring will have the pitchers bat in the lineup. They have been using designated hitters up to this point.