{"id":564260,"date":"2026-03-27T11:57:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T11:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/564260\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T11:57:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T11:57:09","slug":"blue-jays-notes-yesavage-berrios-bieber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/564260\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Jays Notes: Yesavage, Berrios, Bieber"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blue Jays personnel met with the media ahead of tomorrow\u2019s season opener and provided updates on their injured starting pitchers. General manager Ross Atkins said that both Shane Bieber<\/a> and Jos\u00e9 Berr\u00edos<\/a> will be throwing from a mound this week, per Shi Davidi of Sportsnet<\/a>, while Trey Yesavage<\/a> had an encouraging showing in a minor league game recently. \u201cVery encouraging in terms of stuff, velocity, recovery today, location,\u201d manager John Schneider said of Yesavage, per Arden Zwelling of Sportsnet<\/a>. Zwelling adds that Yesavage\u2019s next outing could get to 45 pitches over three innings.<\/p>\n

For the short term, the Jays appear light on rotation depth. They are beginning the season with a solid quintet of Kevin Gausman<\/a>, Dylan Cease<\/a>, Max Scherzer<\/a>, Cody Ponce<\/a> and Eric Lauer<\/a> but things could get dicey if anyone in that group gets hurt.<\/p>\n

Their optionable depth starters are Ricky Tiedemann<\/a>, Adam Macko<\/a> and Lazaro Estrada<\/a>. Tiedemann has been batting injuries for years, including during this year\u2019s spring training. Macko has no big league experience yet. He was recently with the Canadian team in the World Baseball Classic and isn\u2019t stretched out at the moment since that club used him as a reliever. Estrada has just two big league appearances and posted a 5.73 ERA at Triple-A last year. Bowden Francis<\/a> will miss 2026 due to Tommy John surgery.<\/p>\n

Thankfully for the Jays, it seems like their three injured guys aren\u2019t too far off. Yesavage had a shoulder impingement a few weeks ago but is healthy now. He is just a bit behind schedule. The fact that he could soon get up to three innings and 45 pitches suggests that he could be in line for a fairly minimal stay on the IL.<\/p>\n

The situations with the other two are a bit more murky. Bieber was back on the mound in 2025 after his 2024 Tommy John surgery. He experienced some forearm fatigue in the playoffs last year and in the offseason, so the Jays decided to slow-play his build-up in 2026. Now that he\u2019s getting on a mound, he\u2019s effectively at the beginning stages of a typical spring training ramp-up. Perhaps he\u2019ll be in game shape in a month or so, though the team hasn\u2019t put a specific timeline on him.<\/p>\n

Berr\u00edos finished 2025 on the injured list due to elbow inflammation. He appeared to be healthy in spring training, tossing 10 2\/3 innings over three appearances. But an issue then came up in an unusual way. He was planning to join the Puerto Rican team in the WBC and underwent a physical for insurance purposes. Though Berr\u00edos wasn\u2019t experiencing any discomfort, that physical found some inflammation. Further testing revealed a stress fracture in his elbow about a week ago. Despite that ominous-sounding diagnosis, the club\u2019s hope was that Berr\u00edos could start building back up after a bit of rest. That still seems to be the plan, based on this update.<\/p>\n

The overall picture will be a situation to monitor in the coming weeks. As mentioned, the rotation feels a bit thin for now. If Yesavage, Bieber and Berr\u00edos can all get healthy in a month or two, it would theoretically lead to some tough decisions. Presumably, Lauer would get bumped to the bullpen, as that was the plan until it was clear Yesavage would start the season on the IL. Beyond that, it\u2019s unclear how the Jays would handle it if they had more than six healthy starters, though that would be a good problem to have considering where things stand right now.<\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of Kirby Lee, Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Blue Jays personnel met with the media ahead of tomorrow\u2019s season opener and provided updates on their injured…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[49,48,14576,27353,82,76366],"class_list":["post-564260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-jose-berrios","tag-shane-bieber","tag-sports","tag-trey-yesavage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=564260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564260\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}