Blue Jays second baseman Devon Travis will not be able to resume baseball activities for 16 to 20 weeks after undergoing left shoulder surgery, per a club announcement (via Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet.ca, on Twitter). If that time frame holds, Travis will not be ready for Opening Day of the 2016 season.
Travis, 25 in February, was an early Rookie of the Year favorite before shoulder troubles slowed and eventually cut short his excellent 2015 campaign. Acquired from the Tigers in an offseason swap that sent Anthony Gose to Detroit, Travis burst onto the scene with a .304/.361/.498 batting line but was limited to just 62 games and 239 total plate appearances. It’s unclear exactly when he’ll be ready to join the Blue Jays, but for the early portion of the season, it seems safe to assume that Ryan Goins will man second base in Toronto, as he did following Travis’ 2015 injuries.
The question for Toronto is whether or not to seek additional second base depth beyond Goins. While bringing in a starting-caliber second baseman seems unlikely, the team did go out and acquire Cliff Pennington (who signed with the Angels yesterday) to add some infield depth late in the season. Making a similar type of addition, perhaps on a minor league deal, could make sense for the Blue Jays as they look to safeguard themselves against further injuries. Losing Goins, for instance, would greatly call their infield depth into question.
Starting pitching and relief help figure to remain Toronto’s primary focus, but some speculative depth options for the Jays could include names like Jonathan Herrera, Mike Aviles and Alberto Callaspo. A reunion with fan favorite Munenori Kawasaki would, of course, provide additional middle infield depth as well.
16-20 months is kind of almost two years so I wouldn’t think he’d be ready for Opening Day either haha. I bet some Blue Jays fans almost had a heart attack upon reading this headline.
Guilty on the heart attack. Weeks is ok though, Goins more than capable short term fill in.
My fault, was debating between putting it in months or weeks and just botched it.
I would suggest not making people do math, 4-5 months just sounds cleaner haha.
It was how team announced it and most reporters tweeted it, but yeah, probably should’ve gone with the months (as I was obviously leaning). I was distracted with getting ready to hand off our site coverage to Steve, decided to get the post up, and … well, the results were not good.
Weeks* not months
Do you mean 16-20 weeks? Or the 2017 season?
16-20 weeks per the tweet, not months.
16-20 months? Nope.
Weeks is much better lol. I thought they just tore his left arm off and reattached someone else’s and it would take 20 months for him to adjust to his new appendage
Best of luck Devon!
If that time frame holds, opening day for 2017 is in serious jeopardy
Lol. I figured they meant Weeks and not Months. 16-20 months would be an unusual time frame to come up with
Wonder if they do a trade or look at signing Zobrist (who could also replace Encarnion or Bautista who are FA to be also next season I believe)
They will use Goins until he’s ready to return.
Zobrist wouldn’t be much of a replacement for one of two of the best power hitters in all of baseball.
You might want to change the title sounds like serious shoulder surgery
We already did, like right after it went up.
That’s my fault then. My browser must not have updated fast enough.
It’s probably way too early to attach the dreaded adjective “injury-prone” to this dynamic young player, but he is not having a lot of luck at the start of his career. I hope he recovers well, because he is fun to watch.
I wouldn’t put the “prone” label on him yet, this has all been from one single injury.
So what took them so long to decide on surgery? He hasn’t played for almost 4 month. I guess they wanted to see if it improved with conservative treatment but missing ST means he will have to send about a month in the minors before he is ready to return to Toronto. I’d guess June
That feels a little pessimistic to me. Granted this Injury has dragged on and on, but even the upper bound of 20 weeks is the first week of April. Give him 3 weeks to get up to speed and he should be in the bigs no later than May 1 based on this news.
Guess they need to bring back munenori to back up goins till devon gets back