KANSAS CITY — The reality for Edwin Encarnacion is that he’ll play the rest of the post-season in pain, as the ligament sprain in the middle finger on his left hand won’t be able to heal without significant time off.
"I feel it on every swing I take," Encarnacion said. "I’m going to try to do the best I can do. I played today. I’m going to keep doing my treatment and get back at it on Monday."
In his first at-bat during Friday’s ALCS opener in Kansas City, Encarnacion got jammed on an inside pitch, which aggravated the finger injury he’s been carrying for the past two months. Encarnacion eventually left the game after his third at-bat when the pain and swelling became too severe to play through.
He went for X-rays Friday night and had an MRI Saturday morning. Both scans didn’t turn up anything in addition to the ligament strain the Blue Jays were already aware of, meaning Encarnacion’s effectiveness for the rest of the post-season will depend entirely on his ability to tolerate the pain. Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said that if his team were currently playing regular season games, Encarnacion would not be in the lineup.
"He’s a huge part of our lineup. He’s battled this on and off," Gibbons said. "A day off might do him some good—but we need him, so he’s in there. He’ll battle through it."
Encarnacion received an anesthetic injection before Saturday’s game, which he said helped significantly with the pain. The 32-year-old designated hitter has been hitting with his middle and ring fingers taped together and heavily padded for some time, which allows him to grip his bat.
He can’t hold onto the bat with his left hand when he follows through on his swing, but that hasn’t robbed him of the ability to get hits as he contributed a pair of singles to the Blue Jays efforts Saturday afternoon. Encarnacion says there aren’t any tweaks he can make to his bat grip or his swing to take stress off the area, and that the pain is simply something he’ll have to deal with for the rest of October.
"Sometimes it’s not going to be easy for me," Encarnacion said. "I never swing easy, I swing very hard. So, I’m going to feel it."
Troy Tulowitzki also found success as he continued to play through an injury on Saturday, clubbing a single in the fourth and a double in the sixth that scored a run. Much like Encarnacion, Tulowitzki isn’t doing himself any favours by playing through the cracked right scapula he suffered five weeks ago, but will deal with the pain until the end of the Blue Jays season.
"I got some results and got some balls to fall in, but I don’t feel any better today than I did yesterday, to be honest," Tulowitzki said. "I’m just battling. Just trying to do what I can. Playing solid defence—just doing whatever I can to try to help us win. Unfortunately, today, we didn’t win."
Tulowitzki receives plenty of treatment every day in order to be on the field for the Blue Jays, and ices his shoulder thoroughly after games. He was mired in a 2-for-25 slump throughout the ALDS and the first game of the ALCS, but his two hits Saturday helped improve his batting line to .138/.194/.276 in 31 plate appearances this post-season.
"I think at this time of the year everybody’s battling a little bit. Obviously, me coming back from my broken bone, I’m not the same," Tulowitzki said. "But at the same time, I’m trying to do whatever I can to help us win. The same thing with Eddy. He obviously has felt better before. But right now you can’t take any days off. You’ve got to be out there for your team."
How much longer Encarnacion and Tulowitzki will be out there is entirely dependent on the Blue Jays ability to fight their way back into this series. The mood in Toronto’s clubhouse was certainly sombre following Saturday’s defeat, but Tulowitzki felt optimistic the Blue Jays could do the same thing they did a week ago when they were facing a 2-0 deficit against the Texas Rangers.
"We’ve been down 2-0 before," Tulowitzki said. "It’s still a tough loss. Coming in here, you at least want a split. And it looked like the game was right there for us and unfortunately it got away. But we’ve been there before. It’s not a place that we want to be. But, hey, we’re faced with it and this team is tough. I’m sure we’ll battle back."
Blue Jays outfielder Jose Bautista, who put his team into this series with a game-winning three-run homer in Game 5 against the Rangers, had one of the more tense post-game scrums the Blue Jays have provided this post-season. Much of that was due to Bautista’s hesitancy to discuss details of a seventh-inning pop-up that fell between him and second baseman Ryan Goins. But the 34-year-old was much more willing to talk about the challenge facing his team in the ALCS.
"I guess you could say that we’ve been in the same situation before. I guess we have somewhat of a little bit of experience being down 0-2," Bautista said. "It’s not the most comfortable place to be. But we’re still confident.
"I think every single game that we played in the playoffs has been a good baseball game. We’ve won some and we’ve lost some. But we’ve still got a chance to win the series," Bautista continued. "We’ve still got more of a chance to come out victorious in this series than we did in the same situation last series."