Injury Updates: Alford out three-to-six weeks, Smoak has a “wrist thing”

The injury bug that plagued the Blue Jays in 2017 seems to have stuck around into spring training. As we know, key players Troy Tulowitzki and Marcus Stroman won’t be ready for Opening Day, but recently we’ve also learned that Anthony Alford could miss up to a month with a hamstring injury and Justin Smoak has a, uh, wrist thing.

Just as we were all gushing about ridiculously good Anthony Alford was looking in spring, he hurt his hamstring. According to Ben Nicholson-Smith, Alford will be out three-to-six weeks, which is a damn shame because he missed a bunch of time last season and he won’t be able to carry the momentum of a very good spring into the season at Triple-A Buffalo. I take personal responsibility for this because Alford got hurt like 10 seconds after I published an article called “Let’s lean into some Anthony Alford hype.”

The fuck is a wrist thing? Shortly after, Benny Fresh reported that it was actually a wrist sprain that has kept Smoak out of the lineup the past few days. That would also help explain why Smoak has struggled a little bit at the plate in spring. It isn’t supposed to be anything major.

Randal Grichuk is also dealing with a nagging injury from all the way back when he dove for a ball earlier in spring training. This isn’t really a big deal but I mainly wanted to share it because it features a tweet from an account called the Grichuk Report I am very amazed is a thing that exists. If Grichuk for some reason isn’t ready to start the season, it won’t be difficult to justify Teoscar Hernandez filling in for a little while as he’s pounded the ball all spring.

This isn’t an injury update but it’s something to shoehorn in there. Seung-hwan Oh, the new releiver we’ve all just sorta pencilled into the seventh or eighth inning role, still hasn’t pitched yet in spring and we’re running out of games to work with. He’s having a hell of a time getting a visa so he’s only been doing workouts and simulated games since signing with the Jays.