TORONTO – John Schneider’s messages of resolve and leaning into the challenges of an injury-filled start to the 2026 season became all the more necessary Sunday when the Toronto Blue Jays placed George Springer on the injured list.
Though the manager suggested it was possible his team’s leadoff hitter and offensive catalyst might need only a minimum stay of 10 days, a fractured left big toe still made him the club’s 10th player sidelined.
The fallout of the injury suffered in Saturday’s 7-4 loss to the Minnesota Twins meant that Eloy Jimenez’s contract was selected from triple-A Buffalo and the slugger was inserted into the lineup at DH, batting seventh, with Ernie Clement up in Springer’s leadoff spot.
With Alejandro Kirk and Addison Barger also injured in the last week and Anthony Santander lost before spring training started, the Blue Jays’ depth on the position-player side is now being tested the way its pitching staff already has been.
Backfilling the leadoff spot “is going to be, probably a whole lot of different stuff based on the starting pitcher,” said Schneider. “We're going to need some guys to do some things and we're going to need to be a little bit creative. We're going to need to really lean into this and say, this is a challenge when you lose one of the best leadoff hitters in this generation, right? So, we'll figure it out every day. And, I think there are going to be a lot of moving parts, a lot of moving pieces. But, I think that we're pretty good at that.”
The Blue Jays have little other choice, as their roster has been steadily whittled down by injuries beginning with news on the eve of camp. Santander was set for shoulder surgery, Bowden Francis needed reconstructive elbow surgery, and Shane Bieber was sidelined with forearm fatigue.
During the course of camp, the attrition spread to Trey Yesavage, Jose Berrios and Yimi Garcia while Cody Ponce made it through just 2.1 innings of his Blue Jays debut before suffering a season-ending knee injury.
Once Springer fouled a ball off his foot in the third inning Saturday, “with where he is, with where we are right now, I mean, it does feel like woe is me, right? But it can't be that,” said Schneider. “I didn't want to push George and compromise him and have him play at 65, 70 per cent right now. We all know that he will do that in the post-season and down the stretch. But the biggest thing is George has played through stuff a lot since he's been here and I don't want a toe to compromise anything else, lower body or anything like that. He's got one speed that he plays at, and I think we can weather the storm with him and other guys for now, but I don't want anything worse to happen to him. He gets that.”
To that end, the Blue Jays considered giving Springer until the middle of the week to see if he might recover enough, but didn’t want to play shorthanded during that time. Last summer, Clement played through a small hairline fracture in his left hand and after 10 days to heal on the IL, something along those lines could be possible for Springer, as well.
“I think so, yeah, which obviously would be the best-case scenario with what the doctors are saying,” said Schneider. “Doctors are saying he's probably going to feel a little bit better in about a week to 10 days. It's not going to feel great, probably for a couple of weeks, but getting that time in now to make it feel better, I think is only fair to him, and fair to us, really, to kind of have a full roster and to have a normal functioning version of George.”
The Blue Jays will hope for an injection of slug from Jimenez, one of baseball’s most exciting young players whose career was stalled by injury.
Signed to a minor-league deal in January after he finished out last season with Buffalo, Jimenez had a “great camp obviously,” said Schneider, who feels “he's physically in a place where he can do some things that we saw him do a couple of years ago. And that's kind of the hope, is that you continue to have good at-bats, hit the ball hard and help out however you can help out whenever those run-producing situations are there. We want him to kind of i thinget after it.”
They need him, and others, to do just that, as well, as Vladimir Guerrero Jr., pointed out Saturday night.
“This is not the NBA (where) one guy scores 45 points and the team wins,” said Guerrero. “In baseball, everybody in the lineup has to do their part. I'm going to go out there and do my job and the rest of the guys have to do their jobs, too.”
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