Blue Jays Estrada doesn’t expect to miss time with left glute strain

Toronto Blue Jays right-hander Marco Estrada said Wednesday he doesn’t expect to miss much time after being diagnosed with a mild left glute strain a night earlier.

The 34-year-old left Tuesday’s home game against the New York Mets after recording just one out in the first inning. An MRI revealed the strain after the game.

Estrada said his goal is to make his next start, which would be Tuesday against the Braves in Atlanta.

“Obviously I need a little time to heal but I think my next outing is not for another week,” Estrada told reporters in the Blue Jays dugout before Wednesday night’s game. “We have two off days in between and that’s going to help me.

“This just happened so it’s hard for me to say right now but I’m going to do everything I can to make the next start.”

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Estrada said he had been dealing with the issue since the day after his road start against the L.A. Angels on June 22 and felt it again in his next start in Houston a week later.

He doesn’t know what caused the strain in the first place.

“I couldn’t really pinpoint what it was but I just kept saying: ‘I’m fine, just treat it,’ get a massage or whatever,” said Estrada, who added that he initially attributed the pain to hip soreness. “With each day it got better and then I went out and pitched again and kind of had to start all over, it got worse.

“It was feeling better until yesterday, not really sure (what happened), I just aggravated it some more and it was just too much for me to keep going. I tried, I wanted to stay out there.”

Estrada is 4-7 with a 4.72 earned-run average through 17 starts this season.

He went to a rough patch this year, failing to record a win over eight starts from April 26 to June 5. But he had appeared to turn a corner since then, pitching six innings or more while allowing two runs or fewer in four of his last six outings.

Estrada called the timing of the injury especially frustrating.

“Mechanically I’ve been feeling really good,” he said. “I feel like my timing is on point right now. I have been making better pitches, a little more quality pitches. … But it’s frustrating. I’ve been in a good place, I’ve been pitching well and the team’s been playing well.”

Estrada, who’s dealt with numerous back injuries in the past, said he’s never had a glute issue before. The fact that it’s on his left side makes the injury feel worse.

“If it was on my right side, I would have pitched through it yesterday, I wouldn’t have had any issues, we wouldn’t be talking about any of this,” Estrada said. “But unfortunately it’s on the left side. It’s the side I stretch. My arm goes up pretty high, it stretches that area out, and then just landing on it bothers it.

“So it’s just a bad area. I don’t think the injury is that significant, it’s more the placement of where it is.”

Melissa Couto, The Canadian Press