I respect your takes Marc, but I wonder if you are confusing rotator cuff vs labral tears.

Rotator cuff tendon tears and impingement syndrome are problematic but very common and certainly more rehabable AFAIK.

The rotator cuff is comprised of four posterior shoulder muscles surrounding the shoulder blade - the supraspinatus, the infraspinatus, the subscapularis and the teres minor.

There’s essentially a design flaw in the shoulder that the tendons from all these muscles located in the upper back involved in moving the shoulder must all travel through a tight bony tunnel beneath the acromion process of the shoulder blade to insert into the upper arm bones.

Unfortunately with overuse, particularly with actions above shoulder level, certain arm positions will create a pinch point in this tunnel that creates inflammation and fraying of the tendons, creating pain, particularly in above the head positions.

This is especially problematic if you make a living hurling baseballs from a 3/4 armslot.

Unless one of the 4 tendons are 100% ruptured though, these types of injuries tend to respond well to rehab and surgery if necessary to make the impinging tunnel wider.

OTOH, shoulder labral tears are more commonly considered to be career killers. Another design flaw of the shoulder is the fact that your entire arm only actually articulates with a coin-shaped plateau on your scapula called the glenoid fossa, that's essentially the size of a toonie compared to the softball of your upper arm bone.

This allows for the near 360 deg range of motion of your shoulder joint, but also makes it inherently unstable. This is one of the reasons it is so much easier to dislocate your shoulder than your hip despite both of them being ball-&-socket joints.

One of the ways your anatomy compensates for this instability is to increase the surface area of the glenoid fossa articulation point on your scapula by surrounding it with a fibrous, cartilaginous ring known as a labrum.

Another pathological problem is the fact that the labral ring around the glenoid fossa contact point is relatively avascular (ie. poor blood supply). So much like other cartilaginous joint parts like the meniscal shock absorbers in your knee, the shoulder labrum don't have much capacity to heal themselves without a good blood supply if they get torn. Surgeries to repair them similarly tend not to be very successful beyond cutting out the frayed parts that get stuck in the joint in certain positions.

Any frayed loose edges of the labrum also tend to be problematic in a joint with such a wide range of motion as the shoulder, particularly in certain overhead positions.

Looking it up, Chris Carpenter had a labral tear as I recalled in 2003 that the Jays deemed at the time (incorrectly) was irreparable.

TL; DR - Bowden's impingement syndrome / rotator cuff tendinitis certainly jeopardizes the rest of his season much like Yimi Garcia but isn't necessarily a career killer.

These splits are obviously a bit silly and lacking context, but since 2021 Vlad has a 119 wRC+ when batting second in the order (866 PA) and when batting third it's 155 (2,032 PA). And in none of those years has he produced better numbers in the two-spot than the three.

— Andrew Stoeten (@AndrewStoeten) June 18, 2025

There’s consequences to making short term focused moves like cups of coffee for prospects, such as 40-man roster management.

Adding Shreck for a night to the 40-man early ties up minor league 40-man roster spot in perpetuity and starts burning his option years.

This is how you end up losing the Sam Dyson and Otto Lopez types off the back end of your roster whenever there's a temporary crunch. Not huge losses, but wasteful ones that fans recall and complain in the off chance they break out elsewhere.

The Will Robertson callup for Lukes over Loperfido looked similarly superfluous until Clase and Straw went down last night.

But a big difference is that Robertson is already 27, buried on the depth chart and likely a minor league FA next year.

So while Robertson has had an impressive breakout in 2025, he's likely still viewed as expendable org fodder or trade bait.

Acquiring Devers would've necessitated unloading one of Springer or Santander in the near future. Unless the Red Sox would've been willing to take Springer and some of his remaining contract in return (doubtful). Or if the injuries to Santander are nagging enough that they don't anticipate him returning this year.

Devers certainly improves the offense, but also would've condemned the team to an everyday outfield of Springer-Varsho-Santander when everyone's healthy. Which is awful defensively in the corners, even with Varsho helping out.

It would've also effectively blocked the entire B-team crop of OFs including Lukes, Clase, Roden, Straw, Robertson, Schneider, Loperfido, Barger, Shreck, etc. Besides whomever got to stick around on the bench as the 4th guy (likely Straw).

Springer would've likely been the one to have to go just based on the remaining term on his contract. You'd imagine the Jays still having to eat most of it just to get him off the roster even with his offensive resurgence given his age and essentially unplayable defense.

You'd also think the front office would have a hard time dumping a popular player like Springer who is getting ever closer to having little MLB usefulness simply because it would make the team better today.

None of this necessarily should've stopped the Jays from acquiring an elite bat if the asking price was right. But it sure would've created lots of chaos for the next 18 months for the OF defense, the OF farm backlog and the 26-man roster.

John Schneider was only partially committed in his answer at the postgame press conference to give Eric Lauer a turn in the rotation every 5 days after his start against Arizona and his amazing first half as swingman.

Schneider unsolicitedly mentioned in his reply that Spencer Turnbull was still completely stretched out even though there does not seem to be a spot for him barring injury or setback given Lauer's play and Scherzer's return.

It makes one wonder if the FO or coaching staff still have made unofficial promises to let Turnbull start. And that his current tandem starter/long man role is only an uneasy holding pattern.

Jays are dead last with only 4.7% of their ground balls turning into infield hits. Only the ChiSox (37) have fewer infield hits than the Jays 39.

One would think this is partially a function of team footspeed (and sometimes effort out of the box).

With watching the games, one would think team infield hit stats must be heavily impacted by official scorer error v. infield hit decisions. The calls at times seem very arbitrary but also tend to favour erring on the side of deference to the fielder.

Speaking of full effort baserunning, there were a couple of times last night where I thought the Jays runners didn't take an extra base when they could have on XBHs. But it was hard to tell because the home broadcast cameras and replays hardly ever show baserunner positions while the ball is rattling around the outfield.

There was Bo's half swing hit with ?Heineman on first that went down the right field line but Bo turned around and stayed at first. Seemed like a potential double, but maybe this was simply due to Bichette's bottom tier footspeed these days.

There was another where Bo didn't score from first on either Vlad or Addison's double with I believe 2 outs. Again, this could've been simply Bo being slow now.

Lastly, there was another time where Barger was on base and didn't advance on a hit as far as expected IIRC, but the camera never showed his position to reveal what happened.

Joey Loperfido must be using a voodoo doll down in AAA.

Although RJ Schreck still seems to be ahead of him om the callup pecking order.