Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said that left-handed reliever Brett Cecil suffered a “pretty significant” calf tear during today’s post-season action, Shi Davidi of Sportsnet.ca tweets.
Cecil appeared to suffer the injury while participating in a run-down to record the third out of the eighth inning. While the team described the injury as calf tightness, an MRI apparently revealed the more significant issue.
It’s obviously too soon to know the prognosis, but Gibbons’ description did not seem optimistic in the short term. The 29-year-old would be a fairly significant loss for a Toronto club that needs to dig itself out of a huge hole in the American League Division Series.
Looking ahead, MLBTR’s arbitration projections like Cecil to take home a $3.4MM salary in his final season of eligibility. He was certainly worth that and more this year, as he recovered from an uneven start to finish with a 2.48 ERA with 11.6 K/9 against 2.2 BB/9 over 54 1/3 innings.
The narrative on Anthopolous is going to change quickly.
Yeah, so much so he’s probably being brought back for next year. Great analysis!
Yeah, because AA is the one pitching poorly and not hitting. These losses are on the players.
It’s ridiculous that pitchers in the AL are fielding their positions. They are there to pitch.
The AL needs to add designated fielders.
I’d like to add in a security fence around the front of the mound, to prevent pitchers getting hit by liners, but for good measure try out a new rule where if the hitter hits that fence, they get a ground-rule single.
That would also eliminate some ground-ball base hits up the middle. I know pitching injuries suck, but adding a fence to the infield just causes the game to change too much.
AL needs to add unlimited substitution also. Player could come in just to run and then slower player could come back in to bat or play defense like NFL does.
Then that allows players to become less athletic and causes too much parity in the game. It also eliminates managerial decisions. The manager should be forced to decide whether to keep Ortiz running at 1st in a tie game or to pinch-run for him. With unlimited substitutions, that wouldn’t matter. It also means a team could carry a bunch of un-athletic, power hitters and have speedy gold glovers playing all over the diamond. I want to see complete players playing the game the whole time. An un-athletic power hitter should only have one position (DH) and the glove-first speedy position players should only have a couple spots on the bench.
So we are going to add another fielder to play in front of the pitcher? That is so silly. You are making the assumption that that player would be able to field the ball better. Chances are, they wouldn’t be able to. The ball is hit so hard that it is going to be hard for anybody to react that close. And with slow-rolling grounders, the pitcher should be able to field them anyways. If they can pitch, they should be athletic enough to act as a fielder. If not, it is something they should practice more. There is certainly no need for designated fielders.
Hey draven, you may want to look up sarcasm in a dictionary.
kln, my sentiments exactly.
Huge blow to the Jays. Gonna be hard to dig themselves out of this hole however I’m predicting they’ll fight back and win the next two. Keep faith jays fans.