Jays’ Drury on DL with hand injury
Brandon Drury showed up in the Blue Jays dugout at Rogers Centre on Tuesday with his hand in a cast to protect a fracture at the base of the fifth metacarpal on his left hand, an injury he suspects happened when the third baseman was hit by a pitch on July 24 while still a member of the New York Yankees.
Two days after that at-bat, the 25-year-old was acquired by the Blue Jays as part of a trade that sent left-hander J.A. Happ to the Bronx.
This isn’t quite a Mike Sirotka scenario, but it has the same feel of a team trading damaged merchandise, and does said team have any responsibility to make good? Sirotka, Jays fans may remember, was the injured left-hander then-GM Gord Ash obtained from the White Sox in exchange for lefty David Wells in January 2001.
The 29-year-old Sirotka had finished the 2000 season with a career high 15 wins and a 3.79 ERA. He was invited to an MLB off-season all-star tour of Japan, where it is believed the shoulder damage was accentuated. Ash believed White Sox GM Kenny Williams knew the extent of the injury and withheld it. The Jays tried to have the deal rescinded but it was not. Since then, no trade is announced until both sides have gone over detailed medical records and an in-person physical.
The Drury trade is different because of that 2001 fiasco. The Jays had access to the Yankees’ X-ray of his hand that had been hit by a pitch and it was clean.
“It just wasn’t really getting any better,” Drury said of the pre-trade injury. “I just wanted to get a CT Scan on it and see if anything was wrong and it was broke. I was doing everything I could to play through it, but it was just to the point where I couldn’t swing right. I couldn’t catch the ball either.”
Drury went for a scan on Sunday morning in Seattle before the club’s series finale against the Mariners and then again on Tuesday in Toronto. The results were the same, and he was placed on the 10-day disabled list. The club also recalled INF Richard Urena from Triple-A Buffalo.
“I was trying to do treatment and stuff for the last week and a half (after the trade),” Drury said. “It just wasn’t getting better. It’s very frustrating. My goal now is to get back healthy and get to where I want to be as fast as I can.” How much did it hamper the young infielder, a player that Jays fans know came over as part of the possible future without Josh Donaldson?
“I was out there playing, so there’s no excuses, but at the same time it didn’t feel too good. I’ve been getting treatment every day. I’ve been coming in early and getting all the stuff done and it just wasn’t really going in the right direction. That’s why we got all the tests.”
In other injury new, Aaron Sanchez (finger) is expected to make a rehab start Thursday in the Gulf Coast League (Rookie). And infielder Lourdes Gurriel Jr. (ankle) has full range of motion and strength. He is going through a hopping, jumping progression and has been long tossing, hitting in the cage and taking ground balls.