After undergoing rotator cuff surgery last September, Daulton Varsho’s status for Spring Training or Opening Day was up in the air, with the general expectation being that the center fielder would need to miss at least some time at the start of the season. Blue Jays manager John Schneider confirmed Varsho’s IL status to reporters (including Sportsnet’s Shi Davidi and Arden Zwelling) today, though the belief is that Varsho should be able to make his 2025 debut before the first month of the season is over.
Varsho has been able to play as a DH during Spring Training, and he has posted some big numbers in this somewhat limited capacity. Simply using Varsho as a designated hitter until his shoulder fully heals isn’t an ideal situation, of course, since the Jays don’t want to do anything to aggravate the injury, and so much of Varsho’s import comes as a defensive player. Varsho won his first career Gold Glove last season, and was recognized by the Fielding Bible as the best overall defender in all of baseball.
While sidelined, Varsho will continue to work at the Jays’ spring complex in Dunedin, with Zwelling writing that Varsho will play in simulated games and in official minor league games. If all goes well, Varsho will start a proper rehab assignment with Triple-A Buffalo before returning to the Blue Jays’ active roster.
As to who will play center field until Varsho is ready, it appears the competition is down to Nathan Lukes, Myles Straw, and Alan Roden. Zwelling notes that the Jays want Roden (who has yet to make his MLB debut) to play on a regular basis, which could hint that Roden might instead be used in an everyday role in Buffalo rather than in what might be a platoon role in Toronto. Roden may not have much less to prove after posting big minor league numbers in 2023-24, plus he has been making a strong case for a roster job with some impressive spring numbers.
Lukes and Straw could operate in a center-field platoon, as Varsho’s placement on the IL will naturally open up another roster spot. The Jays also made more cuts by optioning Joey Loperfido (once also a candidate for part-time center field work) and Leo Jimenez to Triple-A yesterday, and Schneider said today that Davis Schneider and Tyler Heineman will both break camp with the team. Schneidrer will work as backup or part-time player at second base and in left field, while Heineman will back up starting catcher Alejandro Kirk.
In other Jays roster news, Davidi reports that Eric Lauer’s minor league deal contains an assignment clause that can be exercised tomorrow. Should Lauer use the clause, other teams can reach out to the Jays within a 48-hour window to express interest in adding Lauer to their active rosters, and Toronto then have 48 hours to decide whether to move Lauer or add him to the Blue Jays’ own roster.
Lauer split the 2024 season pitching in the KBO League and at the Triple-A level with the Astros and Pirates organization, thus marking his first season without any MLB action since 2017. From 2018-23 with the Padres and Brewers, Lauer had a 4.30 ERA over 596 2/3 innings, operating primarily as a starting pitcher. An injury-plagued 2023 campaign ended his stint in Milwaukee, and he is now looking to rebound in at least a depth role on a big league roster. Should he remain with the Blue Jays, Lauer will be one of the team’s top options at Triple-A should an injury hit anyone in the projected starting rotation.
Hey Mark, I think we’ve all undergone rotator cuffs ha.
How Schneider continues to get a roster spot is a complete mystery to me.
Direct relative! Hah
Keeping Schneider on the roster makes zero sense when the current outlook for the 26 man has no coverage for SS, 3B,1B unless you move an everyday player of position (like Gimenez, Vladdy or Ernie) to cover one of those spots and that in turn opens up another hole. Keeping Leo Jimenez would have made more sense. It is not like Schneider is tear the casing of the ball on offense.
I guess we have to wait until Wednesday and see what the final roster is. Still don’t see any scenario where Schneider would be a good fit on it
Hard to tell a guy with a 199 wRC+ and a well above average hard contact rate that he didn’t do enough to make the team. Hell, he’d be starting for the Yankees.
Varsho, as the Fielding Bible’s best overall defender in 2024, is a statistical outlier whose absence in center field—however brief—offers a natural experiment. His replacement by less defensively elite players (Lukes, Straw, or Roden) provides a quantifiable drop in defensive runs saved (DRS) and ultimate zone rating (UZR) in center field for the Blue Jays during the early 2025 season. This creates a unique dataset: a direct A/B test of Varsho’s defensive impact, isolated from other variables like team composition or pitching changes, which are typically confounded in such analyses.
Now, consider the logical extension: if Varsho returns within a month and resumes his Gold Glove-caliber play, the contrast between his IL stint and his active period could yield the most precise measurement of a single player’s defensive contribution ever recorded in MLB history. This isn’t just about Varsho’s value to the Jays—it’s about establishing a new benchmark for how much a defender can shift team outcomes, potentially upending current WAR (Wins Above Replacement) calculations. WAR models, while sophisticated, often lean on positional averages and lack granular, player-specific control cases like this. The Jays’ roster moves (e.g., cutting Loperfido, keeping Schneider elsewhere) ensure the center field variable remains relatively clean, amplifying the experiment’s clarity.
Loved reading this! “WAR, HUH, GOOD GOD LAWD, WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR……?”
@sonorawind
Providing a baseline of a players value.
We did the with-without analyses more than a decade ago. That’s all in WAR already.
@Brad Johnson
WAR gives us a good guess at a player’s value, but it’s based on averages and big-picture numbers. This Varsho test could give us something sharper—real data from just a few weeks that shows his exact impact. It’s like zooming in with a microscope instead of looking through blurry binoculars. And here’s where it gets wild: if we can measure Varsho this clearly, we could start doing it for every player who misses a little time. Every injury could become a mini-experiment to figure out what each guy really brings to the table. That’s not something WAR does now—it’s a whole new way to think about baseball stats. Varsho’s not just a player here; he could be the key to rewriting how we understand the game.
Hate to burst your bubble because you seem excited, but none of this is correct.
We’ve already done WiWo and learned what lessons there are to learn. Your characterizations of WAR are also incorrect. Nor does a few weeks spread across two seasons with a major injury in the middle serve as a useful test case. The sample size is too small, and we don’t know if we’re comparing apples to apples when it comes to Varsho or how the Blue Jays are positioning their fielders. Platoons work better. Ultimately, WiWo doesn’t have many lessons to teach at the public data level.
This guy should be on every contending team’s radar that needs OF help right now. Monitor his progress and if he gets right, and the Blue Jays don’t – I’d love to see the son of Gary Varsho, named after Darren Dutch Daulton, manning CF at the Bank with his elite glove and reverse platoon splits.