TORONTO — Up until mid-August, Michael Saunders was convinced he would play for the Toronto Blue Jays again in 2015. Then he went for a jog.
“Everything was going well until I tried to run again. That was the point when I conceded the fact that my season was over,” Saunders said Friday evening, sitting in the Blue Jays dugout at Rogers Centre. “That was just my body’s way of telling me that I wasn’t ready.”
It put a disappointing cap on a lost season for the 28-year-old from Victoria, B.C., who was enormously excited to play in his home country after a December trade from Seattle to Toronto. Saunders spent most of his year struggling to recover from issues in his left knee after surgery this spring. When he couldn’t pass the running test in August, the Blue Jays decided to shut him down as he was simply running out of time to recover. He wound up playing just nine games in his first season with the Blue Jays.
You likely know by now that Saunders tore the meniscus in his left knee when he stepped on a sprinkler head while shagging fly balls during spring training this February. He had surgery a day later to remove 60 per cent of the meniscus, walking out of the operating room and returning to baseball activities just a few weeks later, eventually beginning a rehab assignment in early April.
However, what no one knew at the time, including Saunders and Blue Jays doctors, was that the outfielder was carrying an asymptomatic bone bruise in the knee during his rehab assignment, an injury that began to show symptoms when Saunders returned to the Blue Jays in late April. Essentially, his tibia and femur weren’t accustomed to working in closer proximity without the segment of meniscus he had removed, which was causing a bone bruise on his tibial plateau, the highest point of his tibia.
Download it now: iOS | Android | Windows
“I wasn’t coming back too early. I was feeling fantastic. I was running like I hadn’t had surgery,” Saunders said. “The surgery was clean. It was a successful surgery. … It’s just about conditioning that area to accept the fact that there’s no longer meniscus there.”
The bone bruise really began to wear on Saunders during a three-game series in Cleveland when he was visibly impeded while running in the outfield. He took five days off and had his knee drained in an attempt to relieve the discomfort, but after playing one more game it was decided he needed significant time to get back to full health.
He went to Florida and rested his knee for months before a July MRI cleared him to begin ramping up activity. He went through several pool workouts, performed isolated exercises while lying on a trainer’s table and started doing load-bearing exercises like squats and deadlifts. But when he couldn’t run without discomfort, he knew his hopes of returning to the Blue Jays were nil.
After he accepted that fact, Saunders travelled to the Steadman-Hawkins Clinic in Colorado to visit with a knee specialist and get another opinion on his progress.
“I sought help. I sought answers,” Saunders said. “There are thousands of athletes that have had the same surgery as me. Not all of them have developed bone bruises like I did. But some of them have and they’ve all come back great. The specialist I talked to confirmed that there’s not one guy that he’s seen that hasn’t come back fully healed from this. That was really encouraging for me. It gave me peace of mind.”
Right now Saunders is in off-season mode, riding a stationary bike and lifting weights with his upper body but not doing anything else to put stress on his knee. He’ll have a series of MRIs over the winter to ensure the bone bruise has been completely eradicated, with the first one coming in early November. Once the bone bruise is fully healed, he’ll start reconditioning his knee and going through his normal off-season process of taking swings at batting cages near his home and working out in preparation for spring training.
“I’m confident that the MRI in November will show that everything’s fully gone,” Saunders said. “All signs point to me being 100 per cent for spring training and ready to contribute in 2016.”
Saunders earned a $2.875-million salary this season and is entering his final year of arbitration before becoming eligible for free agency following the 2016 season. The Blue Jays could bring him back next year by extending him the offer of arbitration or re-signing him. They could also decline to tender Saunders a contract, making him a free agent. What direction the club will go in remains to be seen.
For the time being, Saunders will travel with the Blue Jays through the rest of the regular season and as far as the team lasts in the playoffs, providing moral support in the dugout and clubhouse.
“I was on the couch watching the guys every night and screaming at the TV. I was into it. I can’t imagine what the country is feeling right now,” Saunders said. “For me, this is the next best thing to playing—being back with the team, cheering on the guys, throwing my pom pom’s on, doing whatever I can. Even though I’m not on the field, I still want to be a part of it.”