Bautista begins a rehab assignment, could return next week; Estrada feeling good and ready to go

Photo credit: Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports

What would you say if I told you that today we have some Jays injury scuttlebutt that’s too big for me to save for the upcoming Game Threat?

What if I told you that it’s so huge I took a break from the Anatomy Of A JaysTalk post I’ve been wrestling with for far too many hours in order to write about it?

What if I said that this is huge news that you’ve gotta read!

And what if I told you that… uh… you pretty much got the gist of what’s going on from the title of this post?

Maybe that would make me a jerk! But how are you going to stay mad at me right now, when we learned today that Jose Bautista will begin a rehab assignment tomorrow, suiting up for Dunedin, before moving on to Buffalo for Friday? Aaaand that, per Shi Davidi, Marco Estrada threw a side session today, that his back felt good, and that he’s ready to rejoin the rotation on Friday?

You’re not, that’s how! This is good news!

So much so that I don’t really have anything to say about it.

It’s so good I can’t even shit on this ridiculous TSN.ca video of former GM Steve Phillips talking about the Jays trading Bautista for Yasiel Puig (who, in case you’ve been in a coma for two years, is now very bad), or suggesting that teams like Kansas City or Texas or Baltimore wouldn’t want to deal for him — not, for fuck sakes, that the Jays are looking to move him — because of the run-ins he’s had with players on those clubs in recent years.

Or at least I can’t shit on it too much.

But yeah. Bautista’s almost back! Estrada’s doing OK!

Barry Davis tweets that Ryan Goins could return to the club as soon as Friday, which is… something. 

Meanwhile, the club needs to make a decision soon on lefty reliever Franklin Morales. Gregor Chisholm tweets that Morales’s rehab clock is running out, and that he’s out of options and will likely either be activated Friday or released. It wouldn’t shock me to see Aaron Loup, who still has options remaining, go down for six weeks (i.e. until rosters expand in September), but I have absolutely no idea where the Jays’ thinking may be at on this. Perhaps they release him. That would make it a pretty ugly use of the $2-million they’re paying him regardless, but meh, was worth a shot.

Incidentally, John Lott wrote about the mysterious case of Morales for us a couple weeks ago.