—Brett Lawrie insists there’s no reason to worry.
Blue Jays fans, of course, will worry anyway.
The injured third baseman returned to the Jays spring training complex on Tuesday morning to see team doctors and training staff after participating in a non-active role with Team Canada at the World Baseball Classic until the Canadians were eliminated Sunday night.
Lawrie has what the team is calling a strained rib muscle and is, for now, completely grounded.
“I feel good. Better than I did when it first happened. Now just got to keep doing what I’m doing until it’s right. Keep icing it and keep doing the treatment to get it better,” Lawrie told reporters. “See, that’s the thing with these things. It’s not so much a timeline on how I feel. Last year they tried to give me a timeline but it was just going to get better when it wanted to. Now its kind of the same thing.”
“Now it’s just about getting good blood flow in there. As far as activities, no baseball stuff today.
“Nothing too crazy. Don’t want to irritate these things and allow them to linger. It just sets you back. So you want to get it to 100 per cent before you start doing things.”
Lawrie said he still believes he’ll be ready for the April 2nd season opener at Rogers Centre.
“Oh yeah. As of right now, it feels night and day to when I first did it. I anticipate I should be out there (Opening Day),” he said.
The third baseman suffered the injury in a March 6 exhibition game for Canada against Cincinnati in Goodyear, Arizona. He pulled himself from the game, which he said was a lesson he learned from trying to play through a similar injury last year.
“I learned big-time. Last year I figured it would just go away and I’d be able to play. That was totally not the case,” he said. “It got a little bit worse, eventually to the point where I swung one time and it just did not feel like it was supposed to.
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