Injury was added to insult as the Toronto Blue Jays closed out a 3-7 road trip with a loss in Cincinnati as both Brett Lawrie and Jose Bautista had to leave the game early, in consecutive innings.
Adam Lind has been unable to run after fouling a ball off his foot last Saturday in Baltimore, but he wasn’t going to start any games in the National League park this weekend anyway, and with Colby Rasmus coming back off the disabled list earlier this week it appeared as though the Blue Jays were getting their line-up back in good shape.
Then Sunday happened.
Lawrie was hit in the left hand by a pitch twice in the span of five days over the past week, but both times managed to shake it off and stay in the line-up. He didn’t get lucky a third time, though. A Johnny Cueto offering in the second inning ran in on Lawrie and fractured a knuckle of his right index finger. Early estimates are that Lawrie will miss about a month, the usual recovery time for this type of injury is somewhere between three and six weeks.
With two on and nobody out in the third inning Sunday, Bautista decided to try to drop down a bunt for a base hit, raced down the line, hit the bag safely and then grimaced as he slowed himself down. He stayed in the game, stretching out his leg and feeling around his knee. Bautista ran to second on a two-run single by Colby Rasmus, and then took himself out of the game with what the Blue Jays reported was tightness in his left leg, he will have an MRI on Monday.
It has felt as though the Blue Jays had managed to stay remarkably injury-free this season, though Lind, Rasmus, Jose Reyes and Casey Janssen have all spent time on the disabled list while Brett Cecil and Brandon Morrow currently reside there.
Lawrie is most definitely headed to the DL, and if Bautista should join him that would mean more than half of the Blue Jays’ regular players will have spent time on the shelf in the first half of this season. And yet, they remain in first place in the American League East, as tenuous as their grip on that position is, having lost 11 of their last 15 games and with the Yankees coming to town for three.
The question now is, who will the reinforcements be? While a trade for a quality infielder to take Lawrie’s place would be ideal, those sorts of trades aren’t generally available until around the all-star break, by which time Lawrie will be close to coming back, so the fort likely needs to be held with help from within right now.
Juan Francisco, who had been slowly losing playing time due to the struggles that have seen him hit just .160/.208/.420 in the month of June (with 22 strikeouts in 50 at-bats), is likely now back in as the regular third baseman, against right-handed pitchers, at least.
The Blue Jays have right-handed hitting Andy LaRoche down in Buffalo. He’s a former major-leaguer and a very good defender who is having a terrific June, hitting .314/.359/.486 for the month. Jared Goedert is also a right-handed hitting third baseman, hitting .284/.358/.440 for the season, but he’s in a pretty big slump right now, with just eight hits in his last 36 at-bats. Neither LaRoche nor Goedert is on the Blue Jays’ 40-man roster.
If Bautista has to be shelved, Anthony Gose or Kevin Pillar would be the obvious answer. With Lawrie going on the disabled list, Gose can be called up without having to spend 10 days on option, but Pillar is on fire in Buffalo, hitting .391/.429/.609 in 12 games since his return to the minors. Gose has only been down there a few days, and he has one hit in 10 at-bats.
Bautista was cautiously optimistic when speaking to reporters after Sunday’s game, saying he didn’t feel all that bad, that he might only need a couple of days off and may even be able to DH on Monday, but he was anxious to see the results of the MRI.
The good news is that the Blue Jays still hold a game and a half lead on the Yankees and Orioles in the American League East, despite this current 4-11 slump. More good news is that there is still plenty of season remaining to overcome these injuries, just as they’ve been able to overcome the earlier ones to Lind, Rasmus and Reyes.
The bad news is that an injury to Jose Bautista is likely the biggest one they’ll have had to overcome yet – their best hitter (all due respect to Edwin Encarnacion),he’s the only Blue Jay who has played in every game so far this season, and he’s reached base in all but five of them.