TORONTO -- Blue Jays starter Ryan Borucki was shut down early in camp when he experienced some tightness and discomfort in his throwing elbow, but the left-hander has been making progress on his own with the season delayed.

Borucki is working with a personal trainer in Florida and is playing catch with Danny Jansen most days now. Both Borucki and the team are proceeding with caution, both because of his injury history and the time at hand, but he’s optimistic that everything is moving in the right direction.

“In the offseason I was throwing bullpens and I felt OK, but I never felt like I was 100 percent,” Borucki said in a recent appearance on Sportsnet 590 The FAN’s Good Show. “I knew after I had the surgery that I had before, in ’15, I knew how I was supposed to feel. I was just out [there] and I was like, ‘I’m not feeling the same way I should,’ and I went into the training room and they decided to shut me down.”

This soreness didn’t scare Borucki, who seemed relaxed even on the day the Blue Jays shut him down. He has experienced a variety of elbow issues, including Tommy John surgery earlier in his career and a procedure to remove bone spurs in 2019, so he’s familiar with the difference between regular soreness and unusual pain.

In February, Borucki felt like he was experiencing the type of soreness that comes naturally to pitchers. He just felt it at a time when all eyes were on him in Spring Training, not in January, so it was more public.

Borucki is back to throwing bullpens and feels good about his long toss, which he’s altered recently. Fellow lefty Hyun-Jin Ryu has been a great resource for Borucki, who feels he shares a similar style -- outside of Ryu’s curveball -- with the Korean ace. One of his biggest takeaways, though, has been very simple.

“The thing that I’m really intrigued by is how he plays catch, how nice and easy it is,” Borucki said. “For me, when I was playing catch, I’m not a blowout playing catch, but I like to let it eat a little bit. I think that was kind of making my arm a little more sore than it needed to be. He’s so nice, free and easy, 80 percent [effort]. I’ve been watching him play catch and I’m really starting to implement that into my throwing program.”

More praise for Jansen
Jansen is Borucki’s close friend and spent the offseason training with Borucki’s father, Ray, to establish a new hitting routine that has immediately impressed the Blue Jays. Borucki has had a first-hand look at the progress and, even if there’s a little bias involved, he likes what he’s seen.

“He’s a freak when it comes to hand-eye coordination stuff,” Borucki said. “If he can just get into a routine, he’s a strong guy, he has every chance to be an All-Star at one point in his career. I think he can really take off these next couple of years.”

Atkins on MLB coaching, medical structure
With players spread across the continent, general manager Ross Atkins says that the club’s high performance department is working in tandem with the coaching staff and front office to work on conditioning and development on an individual basis.

“I feel a great deal of comfort with the group that we're working with, that we really are well-equipped to continue to help our players, even in a time like this,” Atkins said. “It's not ideal. It's not what we would hope for obviously, but we still feel very well equipped to continue to help our players given the circumstances.

Estrada looks back on 2015 run
Marco Estrada, one of the great playoff pitchers in Blue Jays playoff history, also joined Sportsnet 590 The FAN in Toronto recently and, like so many others are doing right now, reminisced about the 2015 playoff run. The veteran right-hander spoke at length about the arrival of Troy Tulowitzki and David Price, which brought a jolt of life not just to the ballclub, but to Rogers Centre and the city around it.

“They were everything we wanted them to be,” Estrada said. “They showed up and just killed it for us.”