Blue Jays can't escape injury purgatory as another member of the rotation hits the IL

Does anyone know if Eric Lauer's arm can handle 300 innings? At this point, the Toronto Blue Jays may need him to pitch that many.

Less than 24 hours after José Berrios was diagnosed with a stress fracture in his throwing elbow — an injury which will almost certainly land him on the IL — the Blue Jays announced that rookie phenom and postseason hero Trey Yesavage would be joining the laundry list of starting pitchers on the injured list.

Including Berrios, Yesavage marks the fourth member of the starting rotation that has gone down this spring. Bowden Francis will miss the entire season with Tommy John surgery, while Shane Bieber is tending to some shoulder and arm fatigue that could hold him out for the season's first month. What a brutal string of injuries this has been.

Trey Yesavage's shoulder injury pushes Blue Jays' rotation depth to the brink before Opening Day

Keegan Matheson more or less confirmed (via X) that Eric Lauer will step into Yesavage's vacated rotation spot, which effectively means that Cody Ponce will become the team's No. 4 starter until one of the aforementioned pitchers makes their return form injury.

Thank goodness Max Scherzer decided to run it back for one more season.

Admittedly, the writing was on the wall for a bit with Yesavage, as the 22-year-old had yet to appear in a Spring Training game this year. There was hope that his slow build-up process would give him additional time to recover from a long 2025 campaign that finished with a grueling postseason workload, but the team is making the wise long-term decision by playing it safe with his shoulder.

Instead, Lauer will get his chance to start again, the odds of which seemed dead in the water after the team signed both Ponce and Dylan Cease in free agency. Also of note, he'll be pitching this season on a reliever's salary after losing his arbitration case, which could cause some long-term drama with the team if he offers effective services as a starter.

Of course, that would be a good problem to have given all of the injuries that have besieged the rotation over the past few months. Lauer did cover 15 starts and more than 100 innings with the Blue Jays last year, figures he's surpassed in four other seasons. If nothing else, he can provide the team with a quality innings-eater, though there is hope for more considering he finished 2025 with a 3.18 ERA and 3.85 FIP.

If something were to happen to yet another member of the starting rotation — which, at this point, feels like just a matter of time — the next man up is likely to be one of the team's top prospects on the 40-man roster, a group which includes Angel Bastardo, Jake Bloss (if healthy), Ricky Tiedemann, and Adam Macko.