Donaldson Avoids serious injury
With the way things have been going lately for his team, Toronto Blue Jays manager John Gibbons couldn’t help but think the worst when his star third baseman left the game on Monday with a left calf strain.
Josh Donaldson has been injuryprone the past couple of seasons, after all, and the Jays are in desperate need of his bat heating up. But rather than another serious injury, the Jays got good news on Tuesday with the expectation that Donaldson won’t miss more than a couple of games.
“He’s feeling better, probably surprisingly better,” Gibbons said prior to Tuesday ’s middle game of the three-game series at Fenway. “It’s one of those things you don’t want to get worse, but we need him.” Donaldson had been in solid form at the plate of late riding a season-long seven-game hit streak with a single on Monday and he was batting .320 over that span. Gibbons said the tentative plan is to keep Donaldson out of Wednesday’s series finale while still getting treatment. And with the off day on Thursday, ideally he would be back in the lineup when the Jays kick off a three-game weekend set in Detroit on Friday. With Donaldson out on Tuesday, Russell Martin shifted to the hot corner, making it four positions in four days for the veteran catcher. On Saturday in Philadelphia, he played shortstop, Sunday he was at catcher and Monday in left field.
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He’s hardly the productive force the Jays need at DH, but there are signs Kendrys Morales is starting to come around. Entering Tuesday ’s game, the big Cuban had six hits in his previous 16 at bats for a .375 batting average. “He has (been coming around) over the last couple of weeks,” Gibbons said. “I don’t see anything different. Maybe he’s getting better pitches to hit or maybe he’s laying off a little bit. “Hopefully, he continues that. We need him.”
With an RBI single on Monday, Morales recorded his 100th run batted in as a Jay.