Bad luck came to the Toronto Blue Jays.
Toronto said on the club’s SNS on the 3rd (Korean time), “Catcher Danny Jansen will be placed on the injured list (IL) on the 10th.” As a replacement, catcher Tyler Heineman was called up from Triple A.
Jansen injured the middle finger of his right hand after being hit by Nolan Jones’ foul ball in the bottom of the sixth inning in the ‘2023 Major League’ Colorado Rockies game held at Coors Field in Denver, Colorado, the day before (the 2nd). He endured the pain and finished the inning, but was replaced by pinch hitter Alejandro Kirk in the top of the 7th inning.메이저놀이터
Jansen is the team’s housewife and at the same time Ryu Hyun-jin’s helper. According to Baseball Reference, a major league statistics site, Ryu Hyun-jin worked with Jansen the most in 215⅓ innings in 41 games after moving to Toronto in the 2020 season. This is the second highest record among the 13 catchers that Ryu Hyun-jin has hit so far, after AJ Ellis (41 games, 245 innings).
Since pitchers attach great importance to battery life to the point of having a separate catcher in charge of them, there are already many concerns about how Jansen’s absence will affect Ryu Hyun-jin.
Since Jansen is away, Ryu Hyun-jin is expected to work with Kirk. Kirk is a catcher with excellent offensive ability and has teamed up with Ryu Hyun-jin only once so far (4 innings). Heinemann, who was called up to replace Jansen, has no experience pairing up with Ryu Hyun-jin.
Meanwhile, Toronto was left without infielders Bo Bichette (right thigh muscle injury), Matt Chapman (right hand middle finger ligament sprain), and even Jansen, creating a power vacuum. This is bad news in many ways for Toronto, which is competing fiercely in the postseason with a record of 74 wins and 61 losses this season and is 1.5 games behind wild card 3rd place (Texas Rangers/75 wins, 59 losses), which is the Maginot line for advancing to the postseason.