How desperately do the Blue Jays need Josh Donaldson back?

The Toronto Blue Jays announced Wednesday that Josh Donaldson, on the 10-day disabled list dealing with dead arm, is likely to be activated before Thursday’s games against the Cleveland baseball team.

There’s been a lot of talk about the Blue Jays’ performance without Donaldson, and how “well” they’ve done. Even Jon Morosi has joined in on the fun, saying that manager John Gibbons is doing a great job without Donaldson and Troy Tulowitzki, and, to a lesser extent, Marcus Stroman and Devon Travis.

Yes, the Blue Jays are doing great considering the fact that they haven’t had Donaldson since April 13. But by themselves, since Donaldson went on the disabled list, the Blue Jays have gone 9-9. Not quite ideal and certainly not good enough for some of Toronto’s larger ambitions this season.

If the Blue Jays played exactly .500 baseball until the end of the season, they wouldn’t be in a bad position but they certainly wouldn’t be in a playoff spot. It is unquestionable that Donaldson — and Travis and Stroman (and maybe Tulowitzki) — is needed to provide at least a few more wins.

Now, whether they desperately need Donaldson back is another question. Toronto has done fine against opponents without Donaldson, and has consistently lost to good teams and won against bad teams.

There’s no need to rush Donaldson back, but having him on the roster as soon as possible would be awesome.

Related: Here are some good quotes from Kevin Pillar in the Toronto Sun after the Blue Jays’ victory over the Minnesota Twins on Tuesday night.

“Getting off to a better start allows everybody in here to be a little bit more confident. We’re not getting everyone offensively swinging the bats up to their capability or pitchers not throwing to their capability and we’re still finding ways to win games.

“That’s a huge relief for everyone in this room. Nobody feels like they’re carrying a burden to have to step up and be the guy to throw a gem or come up with a big hit to win a game.

“It’s still early in the season one month in, one sixth of the way through. It’s a scary thought to think that when this team clicks on all cylinders, what we’re capable of doing. We haven’t been able to do that thus far. We’ve shown games where we’ve been able to do it, but we haven’t rally been able to do it for a long period of time.

“Get the starting pitching deep into games with three runs or less and score a lot of runs … all the pieces haven’t really been there altogether and yet we’re still above .500 and within striking distance of leading the American League East.”

Some other stuff:

• Jeff Passan wrote for Yahoo Sports yesterday on the number one prospect in all of baseball Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and the pros and cons of calling him up.
• The Trevor Bauer-Houston Astors feud got an update, thanks to a statement from Bauer. You can read it here.
• Bo Bichette has been upped on the Baseball American top 100 prospect list (he was previously at eight). I don’t have a subscription, so all I know now is that he’s higher than eight.