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Cody Ponce may need surgery on his injured knee.<\/p>\n
The Toronto Blue Jays starting pitcher was originally diagnosed with a sprained anterior cruciate ligament after his right knee buckled chasing down a ground ball on Monday.<\/p>\n
Blue Jays manager John Schneider says Ponce will visit orthopedic surgeon Dr. Neal ElAttrache next week to see if it needs to be operated on.<\/p>\n
Ponce was added to Toronto’s injured list on Tuesday with fellow right-hander Lazaro Estrada recalled from triple-A Buffalo in a corresponding move.<\/p>\n
Blue Jays manager John Schneider told reporters Tuesday that Ponce would miss “some significant time.”<\/p>\n
Ponce was carted off the field in the third inning of Toronto’s 14-5 loss to the Colorado Rockies on Monday. He was chasing down a ground ball by Rockies centre-fielder Jake McCarthy when his knee buckled, and he rolled to the ground in obvious pain.<\/p>\n
It was Ponce’s regular-season debut for the Blue Jays after signing a three-year, $30-million US deal with Toronto on Dec. 10.<\/p>\n
“The person in me just hates it for him, first outing, weird play, all that kind of stuff,” said Schneider, noting Ponce and his brother-in-law, San Francisco 49ers tight end George Kittle, were in high spirits hanging out in Toronto’s clubhouse earlier in the day.<\/p>\n
“He’s handling it OK.”<\/p>\n
Developed kick change-up<\/p>\n
Ponce played for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2020 and 2021, appearing in a total of 20 games with a 1-7 record and a 5.86 earned-run average. He had 48 strikeouts over a total of 55 1\/3 innings pitched.<\/p>\n
He then moved to Japan and South Korea, improving his pitching and developing a kick change-up.<\/p>\n
Ponce was 17-1 over 29 starts with Hanwha in 2025, with a 1.89 ERA and 252 strikeouts to earn the KBO’s most valuable player award.<\/p>\n
Ponce joined four other starting pitchers on Toronto’s IL.<\/p>\n
Shane Bieber (forearm fatigue), Jose Berrios (stress fracture, right elbow) and Trey Yesavage (right shoulder impingement) are all expected to return this season. Bowden Francis (Tommy John surgery) won’t pitch in 2026 and will likely miss the start of the 2027 season.<\/p>\n
Surefire Hall of Famer Max Scherzer pitched against the Rockies on Tuesday night, with Kevin Gausman, the first pitcher in the Blue Jays rotation, pencilled in for Wednesday’s series finale. Dylan Cease takes the mound on Thursday in Chicago against the White Sox.<\/p>\n
Friday is an off-day, meaning Ponce’s spot in the rotation will fall on Sunday’s matinee on the road in Chicago.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think we’re going to bump up anyone [in the rotation] with the off day coming up. I think we’re going to keep them as regularly scheduled,” said Schneider. “We’ll have to use our depth; we’ll have to use whoever can offer length.<\/p>\n
“If that’s one, two times through [the rotation], we do have three other guys kind of getting close, in [Bieber, Berrios, and Yesavage.] I think it’ll be a variety of things, really, to kind of cover that hole until one of those guys is ready to come back.”<\/p>\n
Estrada appeared in two games for Toronto last season, giving up seven runs on 10 hits and striking out 10 over 7 1\/3 innings pitched. He has a 16-25 record across all levels of the minor leagues with a 3.82 ERA and 504 strikeouts over 431 2\/3 innings pitched in eight seasons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 4 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":660572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2288],"tags":[5,2328,2304,4,2305,2303],"class_list":{"0":"post-660571","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb-postseason","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-major-league-baseball-playoffs","10":"tag-major-league-baseball-postseason","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-mlb-playoffs","13":"tag-mlb-postseason"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}