TORONTO — There is a disconnect between the outsized attention on the many narratives surrounding this series with the Los Angeles Dodgers and the far more important realities of the moment for the Toronto Blue Jays.
But not even two weeks into the season, the Blue Jays are in significant duress, forced into roster improvisation due to injury and usage churn, compounded by uncharacteristically sloppy play and a flu circulating the clubhouse. Given that, clinging to last year and framing this as anything other than a difficult series at a bad time misses the point, as right now the defending American League champions are simply riding out a troubling stretch.
“That’s how it works — over the course of 162 games, you’re never going to have everything go right,” George Springer said before a 14-2 Dodgers drubbing in which Max Scherzer threw only two innings to manage some forearm tendonitis, shifting the Blue Jays into survival mode. “There is going to be somebody grinding through something both on and off the field, guys are going to go down. You’re not going to play as well as you would like to all the time. What makes this team good is the ability to respond and to absorb the ebbs and flows of the game, to understand that you can’t try to do too much. You’ve got to go play a really good baseball team, obviously, and whatever happens, happens.”
Right now, little is happening that is good for the Blue Jays.
Scherzer began experiencing the tendinitis a couple of weeks ago, but it only started to impact his throwing after his start against the Colorado Rockies last week. He played catch Sunday, and when his forearm remained tight, he spoke with the club and they decided that the best approach was to make his start Monday, but to keep it short.
“A reduced start like today should really help, allow me to really get underneath this, get all the treatment into it, take all the anti-inflammatories, and that should hopefully knock this out,” Scherzer explained. “I’m not long-term concerned here. I had an issue, it just prevented me from making a full start today. Didn’t throw a bad pitch where it got worse. The forearm didn’t lock up on me. So, hopefully all the good decisions that happened today pay off this weekend.”
Central to that approach was that he not make things worse, and he received “explicit directions, like, you cannot hurt yourself, you can’t take any undue risk,” said Scherzer, adding later: “My mind is I’m going to be making my next start.”
The sensitivity to further injury underlines just how deep injuries have already cut.
Alejandro Kirk, hit on the catcher’s mitt by a foul ball Friday, will undergo surgery Tuesday to repair a fractured left thumb, with manager John Schneider saying rough estimates for his recovery “could be 3-to-4 (weeks), it could be 4-to-6 (weeks) … we’ll see after the surgery.”
Cody Ponce visited specialist Dr. ElAttrache in Los Angeles, where a final determination was to be made on surgery for the ACL sprain in his right knee.
Addison Barger, who left Sunday’s loss in Chicago with discomfort in both ankles, limped through the clubhouse, but the Blue Jays held off putting him on the injured list to see if he recovers enough to avoid the stint, while still adding infielder Tyler Fitzgerald to the taxi squad nonetheless.
On the pitching side, Austin Voth was designated for assignment to make room for Josh Fleming, who may be the next Blue Jay for a day after logging three innings of mop-up duty, allowing four runs on six hits, behind Scherzer.
Fleming is the 17th pitcher the Blue Jays have used this season already, not counting catcher Tyler Heineman, who worked a clean ninth inning Monday in his second outing of the season. Not counting the four position players to make an appearance, they used 34 pitchers all last season, so they’re already halfway to that total after just 10 games, with Patrick Corbin, Trey Yesavage, Jose Berrios, Shane Bieber and Yimi Garcia all working their way back.
So, they’re making up a lot of things as they go at the moment.
“I don’t want the woe is me, you know what I mean? It’s what can we do now?” said Schneider. “Right now, not just our depth is being tested, our creativity is being tested as a group, like, how are we going to cover this, what are we going to do? It’s not always perfect, but we take a lot of pride in that and players do, too. The last five games have been really tough. But they’re in a good frame of mind. I think they’ve all been through enough and they’re all old enough and mature enough to say, ‘hey, this is not going to define our season right now.’ If you get caught in that quicksand, you look around and you say, look who’s missing and look who’s hurt, that’s when you could really start to lose it.”
The biggest pivot will be living without Kirk for an extended period, as his absence impacts the lineup as well as every pitcher on the staff. Schneider described him as “an underrated player because what he can do on both sides of the ball is pretty unique,” while adding that “Kirk’s superpower is that he’s just so steady and that is hard to do when you’re back there every day and you’re either working a pitching staff or getting ready for an at-bat, or grinding a tough 10 at-bats and making sure you’re present for the guys. He just never budges and that’s the important part of the position.”
To that end, that’s why Schneider told Heineman and rookie Brandon Valenzuela that “you guys are not Alejandro Kirk, you guys are your own people, you don’t have to do anything that he does, you have to do what you’re good at.”
The same applies across the roster until the Blue Jays get themselves right at the plate, play cleaner in the field and find a way to better utilize their pitching, rather than worrying simply about getting through the next nine innings.
Perspective, then, on facing the Dodgers, laden in narrative as the series may be.
“It’s three games in April, against a very good team, and we’re going to have to play some good baseball. That’s it. There’s no real anything,” said Springer. “I get the opponent’s name. But at the end of the day, it’s a very, very good team on the other side of the line. And, we’re going to have to play good baseball.”
Regardless of who is across the diamond.
