Toronto Blue Jays Lose Russ Canzler On Waivers

By Thom Tsang
Rob Grabowski-USA TODAY Sports

Well, so much for that whole Adam Lind platoon partner thing:

According to Jordan Bastian of MLB.com, Cleveland Indians GM Chris Antonetti “agonized” over the decision to DFA the 26-year-old Russ Canzler to begin with; so when the Toronto Blue Jays put their newest acquisition through waivers, Antonetti jumped at the chance to bring the first baseman back.

Of course, this isn’t a particularly significant loss for the Blue Jays, although you could call it one of those “aww…too bad” type of moves. While the team would likely have had Canzler start in the minors in 2013, he did represent an intriguing potential solution to the Lind problem, having posted eye-catching numbers against lefties in his short major league career thus far.

Canzler’s skill set at the plate vs. LHP, along with the ability to play in both the infield and out, is one that the Blue Jays don’t really have on their roster at their moment. It would have been a nice-to-have quantity on the roster, but hey, there are still a few months in the off-season for the team to find a solution.

And so Lind can breath a momentarily sigh of relief. At least, until the Indians figure out how they’re going to make room for Nick Swisher and Brett Myers, anyway:

Will Antonetti agonize over the possibility of having to put Canzler through waivers again?

Will Alex Anthopoulos jump at a second chance to pick him up?

Will a mystery team join the fray?

Could we see a third post about Russ Canzler – who I’m going to assume most of us (including myself) didn’t know about – within a span of 30 days? Stay tuned.

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