Blue Jays clinging to hope Alek Manoah’s injury isn’t serious

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“Right elbow discomfort.”

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Baseball players and those who follow the game know that three-word diagnosis issued by the Blue Jays on their hard-luck starter Alek Manoah on Wednesday was the optimistic view.

Throw out the best-case scenario until more details are known, then hold your breath and hope that the big right-hander, who was just pitching his way back to form, won’t be out for too long.

Unfortunately, any time an elbow is mentioned in an injury update with a pitcher and any time your manager pops out of the dugout as quickly as John Schneider did at Guaranteed Rate Field in Chicago, the concerns run deep.

Manoah, who lasted just 1.2 innings in the Jays’ eventual 3-1 win over the White Sox, was scheduled to have an MRI in Toronto during the team’s Thursday off-day, after which the pitcher and the team will know what they are dealing with.

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“It sucks,” Manoah told reporters in Chicago following Wednesday’s game, finding it difficult to summon much optimism against this latest kick against him. “I’ve dealt with a lot of (crap) this past year to get back to this point. This game is tough.”

It speaks to those travails that Manoah was trying to pitch through something that had started to bother him in his previous start against the Tigers. But after treatment and some work between those starts, Manoah and the team felt he was ready to go. In hindsight, perhaps the discomfort was a warning sign, but the competitor in Manoah clearly wanted to build on the first true signs of momentum in form that he had enjoyed since the 2022 season.

Beyond the health of an arm central to their rotation, which is of paramount concern at this point, it’s another challenge heaped on the Jays in what so far has been a season of them.

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The options to replace Manoah, for however long he’s sidelined, are as lean as they were through much of 2023 and again at the start of the current season. In fact, they may be worse off now, the latest development to speak rather loudly as an indictment against the team’s lack of pitching depth.

In the short term, possibilities include some combination of reliever Trevor Richards (who was excellent in 3.1 innings of immediate relief for Manoah on Wednesday) and Bowden Francis, who is ready to return from a rehab stint in Buffalo.

Eventually, Cuban Yariel Rodriguez will be a candidate to exit the injured list and be an option, but in his most recent comeback effort with triple-A Buffalo he threw just 34 pitches. Back in spring training, the optimistic buzz was that top prospect Ricky Tiedemann might be ready for promotion by the beginning of June, but he’s still on the injured list with elbow issues of his own.

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Beyond that, there’s always 37-year-old Panamanian Paolo Espino, the Jays’ version of desperation depth down on the farm.

Add in the ongoing neck woes hindering Chris Bassitt — albeit an ailment yet to cost him a start, though almost did on Monday — and the troubles that have hampered the bullpen have now returned to the rotation. That, of course, will add further strain to the relieving corps.

As for Manoah, who was making his fifth start of the season and of late showing some of the bravado that made the former first-round pick such a gamer, perhaps the setback will be a minor one. At this point, a short stint on the IL would feel like a sigh-of-relief win for all involved.

ON A ROLL?

Yes, it came against the lowly White Sox, the worst team in Major League Baseball and playing like it, but at least the Jays are showing signs of gathering some momentum.

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Winning three in a row on Chicago’s South Side won’t exactly a cure all but the modest win “streak”  is now just one shy of their season’s best, a four-gamer that ended on April 16.

The team has now played more than a third of its season and with a record of 26-29, has an opportunity to return to the .500 mark for the first time in a month (when they were 15-15 on April 29.) While it’s probably too much to ask for a sweep of the Pirates on a three-game weekend series starting Friday night at the Rogers Centre, such a result would get the Jays back to level before the Orioles come to town for a four-game series beginning on Monday.

Entering Thursday action, the Jays still remain last in the AL East, 11 games in arrears of the division-leading Yankees while sitting four games out of a wild-card spot.

AROUND THE BASES

The sweep of the White Sox allowed the Jays to improve to a modest 9-11 against AL Central opponents and finished their season series against the woeful opponent at 5-1 … Further signs of life from the offence: The Jays’ 43 extra-base hits since May 18 are the most in the majors … The Jays will debut their City Connect uniforms on Friday after a much-hyped unveiling at a downtown bash on Thursday night.

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