TORONTO – The Toronto Blue Jays are giving Kendrys Morales a chance to avoid the disabled list after an MRI Wednesday on the latest soft-tissue injury to strike the team revealed only a minor strain in the slugger’s left hamstring.
Should he continue to recover quickly, the Blue Jays could play with an even shorter bench for a few games to keep from losing him for 10 days. But if his progress slows or stalls, they would then make a move to add some depth to an already badly depleted roster.
Darrell Ceciliani, pulled early from triple-A Buffalo’s 7-1 win Wednesday at Syracuse, is probably on call.
Either way, Morales’ strain continues a worrying trend for a club that’s lost several key players to various strains, spasms and inflammation so far. The Blue Jays and their high-performance department, GM Ross Atkins said in an interview, “absolutely are studying, and were studying, how we can do a better job of preventing soft-tissue injuries.”
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They have good reason to investigate, given the quality of players to have already gone down:
• Troy Tulowitzki, out with a right hamstring strain, is slated to begin a rehab assignment in Florida on Saturday and could rejoin the team next week in Atlanta.
• Josh Donaldson remains out with a right calf strain that happened at the beginning of spring training and has been re-aggravated twice since.
• J.A. Happ remains out with left elbow inflammation after having bone on bone contact while throwing a pitch.
• Roberto Osuna missed time with neck spasms that presented in the area between his shoulder blades.
• And J.P. Howell hit the DL with a left shoulder strain.
Through Wednesday, those players have spent a combined 84 games on the DL, a total that doesn’t include the absences of Aaron Sanchez (fingernail) and Russell Martin (nerve), whose injuries are of a different nature, and Morales.
Have the front office and high-performance department identified a common thread between the soft-tissue troubles?
“Not that we can find,” said Atkins. “The only thing that we can think to date that we’re striving to do as systematically and as routinely as possible is communicate and collaborate with our players to understand exactly how they’re feeling, and how we can help them in any way possible.”
The Blue Jays’ high-performance department was created last year to do all those things and more, and Atkins points out that it’s a long-term project aimed at “identification, development and improvement.”
And while they are looking for ways to improve prevention, “ultimately, I think it comes down to communication and collaboration,” said Atkins. “The title of high performance can skew away from thinking that way, but ultimately it’s going to be a matter of how well we communicate as a group, as a leadership team and with players to prevent those (injuries) from occurring in the future. But, I’d add to that, one of the things that comes with having a more experienced team are injuries like this.”
Asked if that meant there was an age element at play, Atkins replied, “I think there could be, sure.”
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Morales, Happ and Howell are each 34, Tulowitzki is 32 and Donaldson 31, but Osuna is only 22. Still, Howell hadn’t been on the disabled list since 2011, when he was completing the recovery from a shoulder surgery the previous year. Tulowitzki and Morales both said they haven’t had previous hamstring issues. Donaldson had trouble with his calf last year but he was able to play through it. He’s played in all but 19 of 648 regular seasons the previous four years. Osuna had been healthy since undergoing Tommy John surgery in 2013.
It’s very possible the Blue Jays have simply run into some spectacularly bad luck on the health front after doing very well the previous two years. And perhaps the cumulative toll of back-to-back runs to the American League Championship Series is catching up with them.
But in case it’s something else, extra check-ins on how a player is feeling, how well they are hydrated, how they slept and controlling all elements that can be controlled may make sense.
“Here’s how I think of high performance: you put the player in the middle of all the resources in the clubhouse and try to increase the communication and collaboration around helping support them to ensure the right hand is talking to the left hand as we help them with their own routines,” said Atkins.
“We haven’t looked to change things Troy Tulowitzki or Kendrys Morales were doing. We were looking to learn from them and help supplement and complement their routines, and communicate more systematically.”
Another question for the Blue Jays to answer in a mystifying season full of them.
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