DUNEDIN, FLA.—Blue Jays manager John Gibbons says there is only one job still up for grabs in the club’s bullpen: the long reliever.

Though he hasn’t explicitly laid out who is in and who is out, the news strongly suggests that young Aaron Loup has secured a spot as the Jays’ second lefty specialist alongside 42-year-old veteran Darren Oliver. They join a relief corps that will also include Sergio Santos, Steve Delabar, Esmil Rogers and, if healthy, Casey Janssen.

That leaves Brett Cecil and Jeremy Jeffress as the main combatants to be the club’s long reliever and mop-up guy, a role vacated by versatile swingman Carlos Villanueva, who signed as a free agent with the Chicago Cubs.

Both Cecil and Jeffress are out of options and would likely be claimed before clearing waivers. But if Janssen is unable to break camp with the club — he pitched in a minor-league game on Sunday, his first game action since returning from off-season shoulder surgery — both have a chance to make the team.

J.A. Happ remains a possibility in the long role, but he figures to stay stretched out as a starter at Triple-A Buffalo. Brad Lincoln, last year’s return on Travis Snider, has been slowed by a sore shoulder and is also likely headed to Buffalo.

While Gibbons has been coy about naming names, he hasn’t been shy about how fond he and the Jays are of Loup, who made his debut midway through last season and was one of the few minor-league call-ups to stick with the big-league club.

The 25-year-old Louisiana native — a former ninth-round pick who throws from a three-quarter arm slot — emerged from relative obscurity as one of the bright spots in an otherwise miserable 2012 for the Jays, posting a 2.64 ERA and walking just two batters in 30-plus innings. Despite only pitching in 33 games, he was named the Jays’ rookie of the year by the Toronto chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America. This spring he has picked up where he left off, allowing one run in seven innings without walking a single batter.

“I can’t complain the way things are going,” Loup said this week. “The mood in camp is pretty relaxed and pretty calm. That’s helped out a lot.”

A few seats down from Loup in the spring-training clubhouse sits Oliver, the elder statesman of the Jays’ pitching staff and Loup’s southpaw counterpart.

When Oliver made his major-league debut for the Texas Rangers on Sept. 1, 1993, Loup was just 5 years old. But like goalies and drummers, lefties belong to an oddball fraternity so the two pitchers share a kinship despite being at opposite ends of their careers and what they lack in pop-culture reference points, they share in their unflappable natures.

“I like him a lot, man,” Oliver said of Loup. “Seems like he’s got a carefree attitude out there. Not too much rattles him on the mound.”

A short memory serves a reliever well, says Oliver, and Loup’s easygoing nature will help him weather the high-stakes storms for which he’ll be pressed into duty.

Oliver, meanwhile, seems to be getting better with age. He has posted progressively lower ERAs the last six seasons, leading the Jays with a 2.06 mark last year and handling right-handed hitters just as well as lefties. By deciding to forgo retirement for at least another season, he fortifies the Jays’ bullpen as a proven late-inning arm.

Oliver was a steady hand last season, reliably shutting down opposing lineups with his mid-80s fastball and drawing admiration from coaches and teammates for his smooth, repeatable delivery.

“I wish my golf game was like that, too,” Oliver said, laughing. “Man, I wish it was.”

He says there’s no secret to his easy rhythm, but he’s learned to focus only on what he does before he releases the ball, not what comes after.

“I just try to keep things simple on the mound. Everything happens on the mound. Whatever happens after you throw the ball, that’s up to the hitter.”

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That confidence comes with two decades of big-league experience, of course.

“When you’re younger you throw a lot harder and sometimes — especially if you get into trouble on the mound — you want to do too much and you try to overthrow. I did it when I was young, but the sooner you can figure that out, the better it’ll be.”

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