TORONTO — Ahead of opening day two-and-a-half short weeks ago, Toronto Blue Jays president and CEO Mark Shapiro answered a question about building upon last season in a way that’s turned out to be remarkably prescient.
“There's only one thing that's certain heading into every Major League Baseball season, and that's that something unexpected is going to happen along the way,” he said on March 25. “How we adapt and adjust to that will define this group. … Toughest division in baseball. 162 games. Crap's going to happen that we're not ready for. Let's go. Let's get started. That's the approach I think our guys will take and we need to take.”
At that point, the Blue Jays knew they’d be without Trey Yesavage, Jose Berrios, Shane Bieber, Yimi Garcia, Bowden Francis and Anthony Santander to begin the new year. Since then, they’ve also lost Cody Ponce for the season, Alejandro Kirk for six weeks and Addison Barger for a couple weeks at least, with George Springer joining an ever-expanding list Saturday, leaving a 7-4 loss to the Minnesota Twins with a fractured left big toe.
The extent of the injury — suffered when he fouled a pitch off his foot in the third — though he finished that at-bat, was still being determined after the game, as he underwent a CT scan to help determine a treatment plan, said manager John Schneider.
But barring some surprise outcome, the injury is the latest blow for a team that’s already taken more than its share of them. And given Springer’s importance to the lineup, along with the wider context, word of the fracture hit the Blue Jays hard.
"It feels like we just keep getting punched in the mouth,” said Eric Lauer, still recovering from the illness working through the clubhouse, and who saw the third inning unravel on him for seven runs while working 5.1 innings. “It's one of those where you want it to just kind of stop at some point, but you've just got to keep going through it, hope the next guy steps up, keep grinding it out ABs, keep grinding out innings. But yeah, it has felt like we could use a break a little bit, we could use something going in our favour for a little bit.”
“It's challenging,” said Nathan Lukes, the outfielder who is a candidate to help fill in at leadoff. “The guys that we lost to IL and then the sickness that has been running through the clubhouse, it's almost like none of us can catch a break right now. It's got to switch. It has to switch. It's tough, but it's baseball. And I feel like George, whatever the diagnosis is, he wants to be in there as quickly as possible. I know that's what he wants. We'll see.”
Added Vladimir Guerrero Jr.: “It's difficult, but you've got to keep playing, grind, be ready every day. It's tough because we don't want to lose one of the best players in the lineup. We lost Kirk last week and now George, but it’s part of baseball and we're going to continue to play hard until those guys come back.”
Already forced into improvisation with their rotation due to the slate of injuries — hello, Patrick Corbin — the Blue Jays’ “creativity will get tested” in the lineup as well, said Schneider, with three of their top offensive players on the shelf.
The club’s offensive catalyst, Springer got the Blue Jays going in the first inning Saturday, working a leadoff walk off Joe Ryan before Daulton Varsho ripped a four-seamer up and in over the wall in left to open a 2-0 lead.
That advantage was short-lived as Lauer, feeling better after starting in Chicago last week drained by illness, had a third inning that opened with a Brooks Lee solo shot and ended with Trevor Larnach’s three-run homer with two outs.
The Blue Jays managed only two hits and a walk from there until the ninth, when Guerrero led off with a single and Jesus Sanchez followed with a two-run homer, but for a club finding runs scarce in the early going, covering a Springer absence won’t be easy.
“The minute we start saying woe is me, or woe is us or why us, that's when things can really unravel,” said Schneider. “If you try to map out the course of a six, seven, eight month season, these things are going to happen. It's just really unfortunate and weird that these things happened within the first couple of weeks of the season. But I want the guys to continue to say, 'OK, what can we do now?' This is players, coaches, myself. That's how I'm handling it. Next man up, and OK, what are we going to do now? And if it has to look a little bit different, so be it. You have to be able to adjust.”
A platoon of Lukes and Davis Schneider atop the lineup makes some sense based on past usage, although there’s no clear next man up from triple-A Buffalo.
Given that DH is now open, Eloy Jimenez, the lumbering slugger who impressed during spring training and is now at triple-A Buffalo with a .775 OPS, is one possibility, while outfielder Yohendrick Pinango, who leads the Bisons with two homers and a .794 OPS, is another.
No matter who comes up, the Blue Jays are unlikely to find one player to backfill the gap or replace the lost production.
Nor should any single player try to do that, either.
“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 his part. I'm going to go out there and do my job and the rest of the guys have to do their jobs, too.”
That’s the only approach the Blue Jays can take now that the unexpected has not only struck, but keeps on striking, too.
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