The Toronto Blue Jays received some bad news on Friday but it isn’t something that they haven’t heard before. Catcher Danny Jansen fractured the pisiform bone in his right wrist and will miss the start of the season.
According to Keegan Matheson of MLB.com, the pisiform bone is very small and sits where the hand meets the wrist underneath the pinky finger.
Jansen is no stranger to hand injuries. He fractured his right middle finger on a foul tip in 2023, and the fifth metacarpal on his left hand when a pitch hit him in 2022. He also had multiple hand injuries in the minor leagues.
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“He’s getting good at dealing with it, for sure,” manager John Schneider said. “Some of it is luck, some of it is where he is in the box and the way his swing operates, which he is aware of. Hopefully, we can get him back quickly and get some padding on that hand, not just the left one, but the right one.”
Jansen was struck on the inside of his right wrist as he started to check his swing with a 93.4-mph fastball from the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Carmen Mlodzinski but there are worse bones to break and manager John Schneider feels like they “really dodged a bullet.”
The starting catcher’s last two seasons have been shortened by injury but he has produced a .242 batting average with 32 home runs and an .817 OPS. When he is healthy, he has proven himself as one of the best well-rounded catchers in the league. However, his pull-power stance leaves him exposed on the inside and is something he has to be conscious of when he returns.
With Jansen being down for a couple of weeks, Alejandro Kirk has to step into a full-time role behind the plate. Kirk started 84 games in 2023 and had a .250 batting average in 372 at-bats. He had eight home runs and drove in 43 runs.
“We’re very lucky to have both of those guys as 1A and 1B,” Schneider said. “We’ll build Kirk up regularly. The only difference is when we’re looking at the regular season schedule a little bit and who we’re playing, obviously, with who’s going to be on the mound, what time the games are, when the off-days are.”
Jansen is expected to be reexamined on Friday to determine his initial timeline and until the Blue Jays know when he will return, they have to rely on non-roster invitees Brian Serven or Payton Henry as Kirk’s backup. Both have been productive this spring, leaving Schneider with a tough decision regarding the 40-man roster and who might break camp with the big-league club.
Fractures usually require a healing time of six to eight weeks but the Blue Jays are confident that it won’t take Jansen that long to return.
“We’ll know more today,” Schneider said. “But I think it just depends on how he feels. Really day to day, week to week.”
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