Roster Stuff: Lawrie, Scrubs

The above photo, courtesy of The Star, gives us a pretty reasonable idea of how not to slide in to second base when stealing with a 5 run lead.  You can sort of see Brett Lawrie's right foot and ankle in the background there, demonstrating an approximation of the correct angle that foot and leg joints should point.  You can't see the left ankle, since it happens to be turned many degrees more than it should be, and is hence blocked by the left foot.

We've seen results of this before.  Twelve or so games in to the season, Jose Reyes did pretty well the same thing as Lawrie: he stole second base with a 5 or 6 run lead-- a base that he didn't really need to steal-- and slid awkwardly, bending his ankle back-and-to-the-side, which caused a pretty severe sprain and a 60-plus-day DL stint.

Given the fact that Reyes was immediately writhing in pain and needed to be carted off the field, unable to get up on his own power, we can probably say with a reasonable amount of confidence that Lawrie's injury is less severe than Reyes'.  Lawrie did, after all, try to walk it off, and stayed in the game for another play, before hobbling off to the dugout.

We don't really know the severity of the injury, but Brett Lawrie will be out for at least 15 days, as of May 28th, as he has been placed on the disabled list.

Elsewhere, Brandon Morrow only got through two innings against Atlanta yesterday afternoon, leading to 8 pretty reasonable innings out of the Toronto bullpen.  In order to keep things fresh, Ramon Ortiz, who threw four of those innings, has been DFA'ed.  Thad Weber, who threw the last of those 8 innings, has been optioned to AAA Buffalo.  The result of those three moves, as well as the DFA of Clint Robinson, has made enough room for the Jays to call up Todd Redmond, Neil Wagner, and Juan Perez.

Redmond was already on the 40-man, after being claimed by the Jays from the Orioles.  He is, and always has been, terrible, relative to his Major League peers and is one of those AAAA guys that we tend to hear about.

Wagner is also a AAAA guy, but has crushed for Buffalo so far this year, to the tune of an 0.89 ERA and 32 strikeouts in 20+ innings.

Perez has been equally effective for the Bisons, but, again, is probably a AAAA guy.  He's 34 years old and has appeared in 42 career big league games.

The influx of scrubs probably has a lot to do with the various injuries and performance issues that the Jays rotation is dealing with at the moment.  RA Dickey is dealing with neck soreness, Mark Buehrle has been mediocre or worse for all but two starts, Morrow left yesterday's game after two innings with forearm stiffness, and Josh Johnson finds himself on the disabled list with JA Happ.  It's tough to rely on Esmil Rogers to go too far in to tonight's game, given that he's been a reliever for the last few years, and it's equally tough to rely on Chad Jenkins, who was apparently 8th or 9th on the depth chart for starters.

Casey Janssen is banged up, Sergio Santos and Darren Oliver are on the disabled list, and Steve Delabar, Aaron Loup and Brett Cecil have gotten a metric crapton of work already this year.  If a starter, at some point over the next week or so, can't get through, say, the 5th inning, I'd expect one of Redmond, Wagner or Perez to shoulder a load of innings and then be sent back down to the minors immediately after, the way Ortiz was-- Redmond is the likely mop-up guy, given that both Wagner and Perez have been lights-out relievers, mostly having 1-inning outings in Buffalo.