Jays’ Travis toughs it out on sideline
Collarbone injury keeping Toronto second baseman out of lineup
For Devon Travis, the song was written two lifetimes ago, so it probably is not on his playlist. But he surely can empathize with the lyric.
That’s life, Frank Sinatra sang in 1966: “That’s what the people say. You’re riding high in April, shot down in May.”
After a sensational first month of the season, Travis was shot down on April 30 in Cleveland when a sharp ground ball took a wicked hop and whacked him on the left collarbone. The Blue Jays’ rookie second baseman missed one game, then played the next 14 before the pain that strangled every swing shut him down on Saturday in Houston.
In the big leagues, playing in pain is endemic. Everybody endures assorted aches and pains. And some players spend sleepless nights conflicted about whether to own up to injury and risk missing playing time or continue to play and risk making it worse.
“It’s something that I’ve struggled with a lot,” said Travis, 24. “My job is to come out here and play every single day and help this team win ball games in any way I can. I get pretty frustrated. It’s probably why I sound a little bit down. I’ve really been praying that I just wake up and everything’s feeling better.”
The severe bone bruise in his collarbone, an egregiously unprotected area, ignited inflammation in his left shoulder, the “front” shoulder when he swings. Typically, such an injury will heal in a couple of weeks with treatment and rest. Travis played through the injury for more than two weeks.
Wednesday night against the Angels was his fourth straight game out of the lineup, and he worries about the sluggish recovery process.
Typically, he says, he stays as far away from the trainers’ room as he can, even when he might benefit from a visit. In the past few days, however, he has spent more than hour a day undergoing various treatments designed to purge the inflammation.
Manager John Gibbons says Travis’s status is day to day.
This is familiar territory for many players, but it is new for Travis, whose upbeat personality became a clubhouse staple during April, when he batted .325 with six homers and a 1.018 OPS and was voted the American League Rookie of the month.
His bad-hop injury occurred just as opposing pitchers were beginning to baffle him for the first time in his nascent big-league career. That compounded his exasperation.
Since that ill-fated game i n Cleveland, he has batted .185 with a .556 OPS. After building a reputation for unwavering plate discipline in his first few weeks, he began to chase pitches out of the strike zone. He had seen a lot of fastballs in the early going. Now, pitchers were “throwing everything at him,” Gibbons said.
And with each swing, Travis knew the pain would come.
“The biggest thing is that I’m kind of cutting my swing off to protect my shoulder,” he said.
One of his veteran teammates, Jose Reyes, was doing the same thing to protect an inflamed area around a cracked rib before he landed on the disabled list. Reyes has missed 22 games. He will start a rehab assignment with the Jays’ Triple-A in Buffalo on Thursday.
“I’ll probably have to deal with (soreness) all season,” Reyes said Tuesday, comparing the likely long-term effect with that of an early-season hamstring injury that continued to bother him for the duration last year.
Like the oft-injured Reyes, Travis is burning to return to the lineup and revive the form that made his April such a feel-good story.
“It’s the big leagues, and it’s my dream,” he said. “Obviously, injuries happen to everybody. I just feel pretty unfortunate right now. I’d been having a blast out there.”
Gibbons says he understands Travis did all he could to stay on the field. But when he started wincing with each swing in Houston, it was time for a rest.
“He’s a tough kid,” Gibbons said. “The way he grew up, his upbringing, he’s got that sense of responsibility.”
Meanwhile, like Reyes before him, Travis says it only hurts when he swings. So that familiar smile, so prevalent in April, appears infrequently these days.
“I don’t like being out of the lineup,” he said. “It ruins my day. It puts me in a pretty crappy mood.”