Oh the hits, they just keep on fucking coming. From the busy Twitter fingers of several reporters at Rogers Centre who just spoke with John Gibbons, we have this:
Sergio Santos set for surgery on elbow to clean out some bone spurs ad chips. Won’t end season. #BlueJays
— Shi Davidi (@ShiDavidi) May 14, 2013
And this:
Morrow scratched from Wed start, Ortiz to take his place. #bluejays
— Brendan Kennedy (@BKennedyStar) May 14, 2013
Ugh. Are you for fucking serious?
Oh, and there’s more…
“When the [doctor] says four to five months, they’re giving you the longest period. They’re not going to give you the shortest period. Some guys are going to heal quicker than others. We really just don’t know.”
That was Yankees manager Joe Girardi, according to an MLB.com piece back on October 20th on the timeline for Derek Jeter’s recovery from ankle surgery. Nearly a week earlier, on October 14th, Joel Sherman of the New York Post tweeted that Girardi had said Jeter would need three months to recover.
It’s now seven months later, and Jeter is still not on the field. He will not be back until sometime after the All-Star break.
Well…
According to Gregor’s latest at dot com, Blue Jays starter Josh Johnson is “expected to be out until at least June.” Soreness in his right triceps muscle has kept him from pitching since his last start on April 21st, and he just began playing catch again recently. He’s eligible to come off the DL on Monday, and there was hope that he’d be back by May 21st but… Nope.
The 29-year old Oklahoma native has a 6.86 ERA over his 4 starts as a Blue Jay. As I’m sure you know, his contract expires at the end of the season, so feel free to speculate about how this affects contract extensions for a guy we’ve all seen less than 5 times and has a history of injury.
Also mentioned in the article is the news that Brandon Morrow’s next start will be pushed back, Ramon Ortiz is starting tonight, J.A. Happ will be out 4-to-6 with his head and knee injuries, and hey top pitching prospect Roberto Osuna might need Tommy John surgery. Tons of good news here.
A few items of note being tweeted from camp by the various beat reporters down in Dunedin on this last Monday morning of Spring Training, with the biggest news being that the Jays are taking the cautious– read: smart, albeit frustrating– approach with Brett Lawrie, and will not have him on the roster for Opening Day. He will start the year on the Disabled List in order to take more time to recover from the rib injury that he picked up during the WBC, in the hope that it doesn’t turn into something that nags him throughout the year.
Want proof? Shi Davidi of the Rogers-owned Blue Jays’ Rogers-owned TV broadcaster, Sportsnet, appears to be the first of several to have tweeted this piece of information:
Brett Lawrie to open season on DL. #Bluejays likely to go with 8-man pen out of gate
— Shi Davidi (@ShiDavidi) March 25, 2013
So, that’s not great, though it will allow the club to carry an extra pitcher– which, while slightly ridiculous, gives them just a bit more time to make a decision on one of their out-of-options guys, and maybe lets them use a bit more strategy in timing when they try to send the odd man out through waivers.
In addition to the news about Drew Hutchison this morning, the Blue Jays have also announced that Dustin McGowan will– wait for it…– have surgery tomorrow. On his throwing shoulder. By Dr. James Andrews.
Now, keep in mind, it’s not as bad as it maybe sounds…
The first of a flurry of tweets on the news that I saw came from Brendan Kennedy of the Star, while Mike Wilner added shortly thereafter that it’s arthroscopic surgery, and Chris Toman of MLB.com followed by noting that the surgery will be done simply to further evaluate McGowan’s shoulder joint.
So… no major repairs are happening– we’re told– just an evaluation. But given the player, his injury history, and the contract the club somehow felt it was in their interest to sign him to this spring, it’s certainly not the news anyone wanted to hear. (Well, maybe Parkes.)
Image via Al Messerschmidt/Getty.
I know the feeling, Ricky
Because… of course he is.
In the background above we see JP Arencibia during the A’s spirit-crushing bat-around inning that knocked Ricky Romero out of tonight’s game. Little did we know at the time that, despite staying in to finish the inning after taking a foul ball off the hand, Arencibia was injured. Y’know, like everybody else.
He didn’t return to the game after the Jays mercifully found a way to end the inning, had himself x-rayed, and the results aren’t good. Robert MacLeod of the Globe and Mail passes along the news that was passed along to the press-box mid-game: it’s a broken bone, and he’s expected to be out for six weeks.
I mean… it’s not like it was abundantly clear why the Jays have been reportedly insistent on only trading for assets that will help them both this year and next, but… with Travis d’Arnaud injured and not slated to return until the Arizona Fall League, we’re looking at Jeff Mathis: starting catcher.
And maybe Yan Gomes will get into some games behind the plate, even.
Sigh
Arencibia, thanks largely to his power– as expected– has perhaps been a more valuable player to the Jays this year than you’d believe, or that you [read: I] probably thought just a few weeks ago. He now sports a .317 wOBA, 97 wRC+ and 1.5 WAR per FanGraphs– which for the moment, amazingly, is higher than qualified catchers Mike Napoli, Ryan Doumit, Jesus Montero, and is equal to Carlos Santana.
So, even if it doesn’t feel like he’s been terribly valuable, it’s a blow. If you’d been trying desperately to hold off on calling contention this season too far out of the Jays’ reach, um… add in Ricky Romero’s continuing awfulness and this might not be worst time to let it go.
Image via Brad White/Getty.
If you haven’t seen it, Brett Lawrie dove over a short fence in an attempt to catch a foul ball at Yankee Stadium and had to leave the game after missing the ball and taking a scary looking fall down some kind of pit of death in the bottom on the third inning.
He was removed from the game with a “right calf injury” and will receive precautionary x-rays, according to the team.
Update: The club’s official Twitter account gives us some good news: the x-rays came back negative, and the injury is being called a right calf contusion. Lawrie is day-to-day.
