Blue Jays injury woes

Hey guys, sorry about the lack of material lately. We had finals and then straight into some summer classes so this is the first chance I've had to really sit down and punch out some good material. I hope. We're going to try to cover a variety of topics in the next couple days. We'll start with this.

Who cursed the Blue Jays?
If you live in Toronto and you see a dark-haired man of average build, a shade under 6 ft, with a goofy smile and even goofier glasses, look out, because Jays GM J.P. Ricciardi has got to be homicidal at this point. The Jays finished a strong 2nd in the AL East last year, as I predicted. This year, they were looking to improve on that. Everything was falling into place for them. A healthy A.J. Burnett who wasn't missing his first 10 starts of the season. A strong Cy Young candidate in Roy Halladay. A closer in B.J. Ryan who was automatic last year - a 1.37 ERA and 38 saves. They brought in the aging Frank Thomas, who defied everything we know about time and had a pretty decent year in Oakland in 2006. Reed Johnson and Alex Rios were both coming off career years. Victor Zambrano, Tomo Ohka, and John Thompson were brought in to shore up the back end of the rotation - a risky move at best, but cheap. And on top of all this, the Yankees looked like it was their year to fall, with a struggling pitching rotation.

And then it started... and quickly turned into a cascading disaster. The Jays now have 9 players on the DL, 7 of them key members of the team. LF Reed Johnson - out until at least July with a whacked up back. B.J. Ryan; Tommy John, out for the remainder. SP John Thompson; tendinitis, no return date set. RP Brandon League is on the DL for throwing too slow - literally. SP Gustavo Chacin; sore shoulder. SP Victor Zambrano; sore forearm. Starting catcher Gregg Zaun; non-displaced fracture in his pitching hand. No one knows why reliever Davis Romero is on the 60-day DL, and Roy Halladay is out for about 6 weeks after an emergency appendectomy. These are all serious injuries. Why go through the trouble of listing all of them?

Because the majority of these have not been freak accidents. Sure, you can't prevent Roy Halladay's burst appendix or Gregg Zaun fouling a ball hard enough off his hand to break it. But you can prevent the various forms of tendinitis and soreness, which accounts for Romero, Thomson, League, Zambrano, and Chacin. Johnson and Ryan may have just gotten unlucky and it may have only been a matter of time for them. But when the Jays signed Zambrano and Thomson, they knew they were getting injury-prone pitchers that, even if they were healthy, wouldn't contribute a whole lot to the team. The question is, did the Jays make this move out of desperation because they had no one else to fill up the rotation? Or did they really think these guys would help them win? Either way, they needed to prepare for the likelihood that someone else would have to be pitching. Now the Jays are stuck with 4 injured starters and 3 injured relievers. I've seen this point made by other general managers - namely Jim Leyland - that you must have the capacity to fill up holes in the rotation from inside the organization. Take notes, J.P.. This means that, at the start of your season, you should be able to throw out the names of at least two pitchers that you're confident you can bring up from AAA to fill in, because that's the reality you are going to face at some point in the season. Very, very rarely will you not need a spot starter all year. The key to this is that these guys have to be ready, or close to it, because you're going to pay about 5 times what you should if you try to acquire a decent pitcher mid-season. And of course, it doesn't make sense to bring up a guy if he's only going to kill his confidence.

Additionally, it seems like someone has to be keeping a closer eye on the pitching staff. There are numerous ways to prevent tendinitis and soreness. Sometimes you're going to get sore because you push yourself too hard - but it's the trainers and coaching staff's job to make sure you don't.

Blue Jays and Roses... Spring training - March 5th, 2006