Dave Litman
Sunday wasn’t the best day for the Toronto Blue Jays. To put it lightly. Their four-game winning streak came to an end, and all in the space of one inning, they lost two of their most important players to injury.
Both Dylan Cease and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. were forced to exit Sunday’s 4-1 loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates in the fifth inning.
First, in the top of the 5th, it was Toronto’s $210 million hurler, Cease, who all of a sudden had something going on with his legs in the middle of an at-bat against former Blue Jay Spencer Horwitz.
Cease was seen shaking out his legs, and eventually had to come out of the game.
In the bottom of the 5th, Vladdy was hit in the elbow by a pitch, and immediately took himself out of the contest. He walked off the field and straight into the clubhouse.
Certainly not a good sign, as play-by-play man Dan Shulman noted.
Guerrero’s arm went numb after hit-by-pitch
It was a 92-mph Mitch Keller sinker that hit him on his unprotected inside arm, right at the elbow. Vladdy said his arm went numb, and he had no feeling in his middle and pinky fingers.
Fortunately, though, X-rays came back negative for a fracture, and it’s being called a right elbow contusion.
“When that happened, I thought it was worse than this, but thank God nothing major,” Toronto’s $500 million man said after the game. “Just a little bit painful, but thank God everything is fine.”
As Shi Davidi reported in Sportsnet.ca, overall, it’s a big exhale for Jays management and fans, for now. Same goes for Cease, who reportedly has “mild left hamstring tightness”. He is, however, headed for an MRI, which will hopefully confirm that he’s just looking at “cramping.”
Dylan Cease hasn’t missed a start in 7 years
Cease is an iron man among pitchers in the major leagues these days. He hasn’t missed a start since becoming a regular in 2019. He’s made 32 or 33 starts each year since 2021, and all 12 starts in the shortened 2020 campaign. And he has no intention of missing one due to this cramping thing. He told manager John Schneider that he expects to be ready to go on Friday for his next scheduled outing.
“A guy with his track record, he understands how he feels and what feels like what,” said Schneider.
This all comes at a time when the Jays were finally seeming to turn a corner back to respectability this season. Four straight wins before Sunday had them just two games under .500. Even after Sunday’s loss, they are just one game back of a Wild Card spot. And two of the three WC spots in the AL are currently held by the Chicago White Sox and Minnesota Twins. It would be hard to imagine a world where the defending American League champions weren’t able to overtake those two clubs.
