Devon Travis activated from the DL

Photo Credit: Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports

In news that isn’t likely the greatest harbinger for the upcoming report on Troy Tulowitzki’s status, a day after sounding ready to ease Devon Travis back into big league action, the club has announced that it has activated the second baseman from the Disabled List, optioning switch-pitcher Pat Venditte in order to clear a spot on the big league roster.

That was fast.

Or… it’s actually been just over 10 months (and one surgery to fuse shoulder bones that nature should have fused for him) since Devon Travis got onto the field for the Jays, so I’m sure it doesn’t feel fast for him. But last night, according to a piece at Sportsnet from Shi Davidi, John Gibbons was saying that “You want to make sure he’s seeing enough breaking balls, things like that, facing some of the best pitchers down there. You jump the gun too soon, you don’t want him to get off to a struggle, either.”

Something changed, and since it certainly isn’t the Jays’ need for an extra spark of offence — because that’s been a constant throughout 2016 so far — the assumption has to be that Troy Tulowitzki, who left last night’s game in the seventh inning with a bout of right quadriceps tightness, might need a day or two.

At least, we hope he only needs that much — a fair hope, given that the injury really didn’t look so bad.

With five guys now on the roster for two spots — Tulo, Travis, Goins, Darwin Barney, and Jimmy Parades (theoretically) — the Tulo thing seems to make a lot of sense. If he was healthy and Travis

 to come up today, I suspect we might have seen the demotion of Ryan Goins, who has managed to pull the neat-o trick of somehow hitting worse than Russell Martin, while being approximately 14 kabillion times more expendable.

Travis was only hitting .273/.273/.364 over his five rehab games (22 PA) in Buffalo, but if he’s healthy enough to be playing, he just can’t be much worse than what they’ve got from the position so far — Darwin Barney and his decent production (which I’m going to guess will end up at shortstop most of the time when Tulo is out) excepted. So… let’s do this!

And by “this,” I, of course, mean “wildly inflate our opinions of Travis based on a small sample and then get mad if he doesn’t turn out to be Ian Kinsler*.”

Travis, according to a tweet from Barry Davis, will be in the Jays’ lineup here on Wednesday night (and Tulo is not, FWIW). John Lott wrote an excellent profile of Travis for us last week, as he was beginning his rehab assignment at Buffalo.

*Which he might!