Blue Jays ICYMI: CJ Van Eyk out for 2022 after Tommy John surgery

I like to pride myself on staying up on Blue Jays related news, but I learned something I didn’t know on Monday while I was scrolling through Twitter.

The original credit goes to Scott Mitchell over at TSN, who included the news in a top prospects article that he published at the end of January. I’m a fan of Mitchell’s work and likely read the majority of it, but I must have missed this article and the news about CJ Van Eyk all together.

Apparently Van Eyk had Tommy John surgery on an injured right elbow back in September, and that means that he’ll miss the 2022 season regardless of how long this blasted lockout takes to get figured out. Admittedly, I learned this piece of news from a fairly random Twitter account on Sunday (hat tip to @brennan_l_d).

It’s a disappointing development for the 23 year old, however, it might explain some of the difficulties he had at the High-A level last season. While pitching for the Vancouver Canadians, Van Eyk limped to a 5.83 ERA and a 1.369 ERA over 19 starts that covered 80.1 innings. There was some promise in those roughly 80 innings as he compiled 100 strikeouts on the back of a couple of strong offerings, but he also issued 39 walks during the same span.

The Florida native was originally chosen by the New York Mets in the 19th round of the 2017 draft but elected to play in college for Florida State University for three seasons. It certainly improved his draft stock, as the Blue Jays took him in the 2nd round of the 2020 draft, and paid him above the slot value for a bonus of roughly 1.8 million. Unfortunately his development was hampered by the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, and this latest news certainly doesn’t help either.

That said, Tommy John surgery isn’t the career-threatening injury that it used to be for big league pitchers, and chances are Van Eyk will be able to work his way back to the mound in about a year. If he had the procedure back in September, most of the time it requires 12-18 months before pitchers are able to compete at 100% again.

Maybe this is old news to you, but based on the response I saw from a few other prominent Blue Jays fans on Twitter, I’m guessing I’m not the only one who missed it. I think we can be forgiven for that since we’re in the midst of a lockout, and MLB news has all but frozen lately, but hopefully Van Eyk is already well on his way to healing that promising pitching arm of his, and we’ll see him back on the mound by Spring Training in 2023.