Hot News: Toronto Blue Jays lose Jose Reyes and the game as season gets off to a ...

DUNEDIN, Fla. - They call Jose Reyes a catalyst, a table-setter, a prototypical leadoff hitter. Those are good things, describing a player who has known greatness. But Reyes is also a lightning rod, a symbol for so much of the bad that has befallen the Toronto Blue Jays since he arrived.

Last season, it took only 10 games before an injury struck down the star shortstop. This season, it took one swing.

Leading off in the first inning on Opening Day, Reyes took a strike, then a ball, then bolted for first base after hitting a sinking line drive to centre field. Tampa Bay's Desmond Jennings, a speedster, raced in and made a splendid diving catch.

And that was it for Reyes, who had to leave the game after stirring up a strain in his left hamstring, the same injury that sidelined him for several games near the end of spring training. No one can be certain how much time he will miss.

That set the tone for the Jays' gloomy inaugural, a 9-2 loss to a dominant David Price and the Rays, who own the Jays when they play at Tropicana Field.

Toronto starter R.A. Dickey lasted just five innings. The knuckleballer walked six batters, setting up four of the six runs he surrendered.

Pinch-hitter Erik Kratz, just added to the roster Sunday, hit a two-run homer on the first pitch he saw as a Blue Jay. It came off Price in the eighth inning, and cleared the centre-field wall.

Last season, when injuries to key players plagued the Jays from wire to wire, Reyes missed 66 games after mangling his left ankle on an ill-advised slide on April 12. Before Monday's game, manager John Gibbons stressed the obvious importance of keeping Reyes on the field.

'We said last year going into the season, probably the one guy we really couldn't afford to lose would've been him, and we lost him,' Gibbons said. 'Some other guys did a nice job filling in. They weren't Reyes.'

The guy who filled in Monday was Ryan Goins, the presumptive regular second baseman, who started the game on the bench because he bats left-handed, and so far not very well, and Price had held left-handed batters to a career .198 average.

Gibbons loaded his lineup with righties, using regular catcher Dioner Navarro as the DH instead of lefty Adam Lind, while Josh Thole, Dickey's caddy, did the catching. Colby Rasmus and Thole were the lone lefties in the lineup until Goins replaced Reyes.

The strategy was futile. Price loves the Blue Jays. In 18 career starts, his record against them is 14-2, his ERA 2.45. This time he allowed six hits 7 1/3 innings.

Dickey pitched only one scoreless inning, throwing 88 pitches over five frames. In spring training, he said one of his goals was to reduce his walk total. Tropicana Field seemed a good place to begin that crusade, since he had pitched well there in the past. No help from history this time.

Overshadowing Dickey's deficient outing, however, was the injury spectre that haunted the Jays all of last season and seems only to have taken a few months off before resuming its work.

A couple of weeks back, management described the Reyes hamstring injury as a mild strain, and that seemed accurate until Monday afternoon. But a day earlier, closer Casey Janssen landed on the disabled list with a muscle strain in his left side, a few inches above his hip. He will be sidelined until at least April 13. Jays' fans on Twitter began a familiar refrain: It's happening again.

Reyes has battled leg injuries throughout his career, and most of them have affected his left leg and ankle. Some skeptics wondered why the Jays started Reyes in both exhibition games in Montreal, given his recent hamstring problem and the immediacy of Opening Day. Those games were played on artificial turf, as are the Jays' first 10 games.

Janssen, who was slowed in spring training by a balky shoulder, expressed frustration that his odd injury occurred just as his arm was rounding into shape. He cannot throw, even on flat ground, until the tightness subsides.

The problem arose during warmup pitches before he pitched an inning Friday night in Montreal. He said it did not bother him while he pitched, and it feels better now than it did then.

'Maybe I was compensating a little bit, trying to generate a little bit more power behind it with my front side,' he said. 'It's disappointing because my arm was starting to really, really come around and then to have this little thing - not how I drew it up.'

And one day in, the new season is not unfolding the way the Blue Jays drew it up. It's a tad early to draw parallels to 2013, but Jays' fans cannot be blamed if they're already entertaining that notion.

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