Blue Jays expecting Bieber, Springer soon, but don't hold breath on Santander

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Manager John Schneider had an extensive list of injury updates ready to go Friday afternoon before his Blue Jays began a series with the Texas Rangers.

The good news was it was mostly good news for the American League leaders, though some of it was a bit tempered.

Schneider said the team is hoping former Cy Young winner Shane Bieber’s next start following Friday’s in Buffalo for the triple-A Bisons (assuming no hiccups) will be with the big club next week. That would likely be either Wednesday in Pittsburgh on Bieber’s regular turn, or Friday in Miami

“If all goes well, the plan is to put him on before the weekend and get him pitching,” Schneider said of the former Cleveland Guardians ace.

Schneider indicated it isn’t yet known exactly what will happen with the rotation once Bieber is ready to join. It could be a six-man rotation, or someone could head to the bullpen. Either way, the other pitchers will be ready for the decision.

“We’ve talked with these guys multiple times already, so you have to see where we are when the time arrives. All those guys are aware of that. So it’ll depend on what our starters have done, what our bullpen is like,” he said.

“We have multiple kind of plans in place to kind of see where everyone is, workload, health, stuff like that. So they’re all aware of it. All the starters are all on board.”

A more imminent plan was for Bieber to drive with George Springer back to Toronto following Friday’s game. Springer is rehabbing from his scary concussion by doing some designated hitting.

Schneider said he wouldn’t have an issue playing Springer in the outfield at times upon his return and that he wouldn’t strictly be a DH moving forward (in Buffalo the key was getting him at-bats, not fielding time).

“It will probably be pretty similar to how we were rolling before he went down, but have no problem playing him in the outfield too,” Schneider said.

Springer had only played the outfield in one of his previous 11 full games before getting injured.

The update on Anthony Santander, meanwhile, was of the more cryptic variety. The free agent signing from Baltimore was the biggest disappointment of the season for Toronto before injuring his shoulder in late-May, and though he’s progressing, it’s still baby steps. There are no guarantees Santander will be a factor at all this year, which Schneider made clear Friday.

Schneider said Santander has started a “hitting progression” (meaning he’s swinging a bat off a tee, working his way to facing velocity and eventually doing batting practice) and added “that’s good news” before pouring a bit of cold water on the situation.

“Probably like a few weeks of ramping up. Probably have to play in a good amount of games, I think, to kind of get some timing,” he said of Santander’s continued progression.

“So you’re looking at second week of September, maybe something like that depends on how it builds up, really, and then how the games go,” he said.

When asked the difficulty of throwing someone back in after nearly four months on the sidelines and expecting them to produce, Schneider agreed it wouldn’t be a given.

“I think we’ve got to be totally comfortable that he’s the normal version of himself, we definitely would like to have him back. And you know, the reason why we acquired him (was for his power bat, which included 44 home runs last season and 28 homers plus 41 doubles the previous year). So I think just got to make sure that that’s there before we do anything.”

In other words, don’t expect the Jays to mess with what’s working unless they’re certain Santander is back to his old self.

@WolstatSun