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Toronto Blue Jays’ Brett Lawrie’s World Baseball Classic is over before it starts

Neate Sager

Bad news for Team Canada at the World Baseball Classic, if not necessarily bad news for Brett Lawrie and the Toronto Blue Jays, which one suspects are greater concerns to most seamheads.

Canada is already missing one everyday player, catcher Russell Martin, from its WBC squad and it is now without a second after the discomfort in his left side Lawrie began experiencing Wednesday has turned out to be "a mild strain near his 10th rib and left intercostal muscle."

Who knows, maybe the 23-year-old third baseman using an ounce of prevention here shows the creeping onset of maturity. There is a train of thought that the B.C. native could be the second coming of Kelly Gruber, a terrific talent betrayed but not realizing baseball isn't played at 100 miles (guess that should read 160 km) per hour.

From Shi Davidi:

The diagnosis came down Thursday morning and while his oblique muscle is fine – a relief after his right oblique cost him roughly two months last season – the recommendation was that he give the area time to rest. There’s no timetable for a return to action, but it won’t happen at the Classic. (Sportsnet)

Does it impact Canada's chances of advancing out of a pool that includes Italy, Mexico and the United States? You betcha. Taylor Green, who's been up and down between the Milwaukee Brewers and Triple-A ball for the past two seasons, will have to step in as the starting third baseman.

From reading the tweets and the tea leaves, it might not be too serious an injury for Lawrie. There does seem to be some spinning that it's not a re-aggravation of the oblique injury that kept him out of the Blue Jays lineup last season and could be a chronic issue for the 23-year-old B.C. native.

From Andrew Stoeten:

Not to be too much of a doomsayer, but didn’t Lawrie just get through, y’know, several months of not playing through the injury? Or are we really to believe that this is an entirely different injury, yet somehow also exactly the same? Like, is this a lingering holdover from last year’s trouble, or a completely new hurt in the same area? (Drunk Jays Fans)

Canada faces Italy in its opener on Friday (2:30 p.m.. ET/11:30 a.m. PT, Sportsnet).

Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet. Please address any questions, comments or concerns to btnblog@yahoo.ca.