Blue Jays' Nathan Lukes has been playing through vertigo

Blue Jays' Nathan Lukes has been playing through vertigo originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

Nathan Lukes got off to an abysmal start to the 2026 MLB season for the Toronto Blue Jays.

Turns out he was playing through vertigo.

According to Sportsnet's Arden Zwelling, Lukes was "recently diagnosed" with the condition.

"Nathan Lukes, 3-for-32 to begin the season, has been experiencing intermittent dizziness and nausea since spring training," Zwelling wrote on X. "He was recently diagnosed with vertigo. Blue Jays medical staff cleared Lukes to continue playing and coaching staff trusted him to battle through it."

Lukes saw a specialist in Arizona on Friday, according to Zwelling, and has said he is feeling better.

It's still, from the outside, an odd situation.

What is vertigo?

"Vertigo can cause an unusual sensation in which it feels as if your surroundings are in motion when still," Zwelling wrote on X. "Makes it difficult to shift visual focus from one spot to another quickly and track moving objects. Explains Lukes’ 44% chase rate, an extreme outlier for his career."

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Hitting is hard enough with full functionality of your senses. Major league pitchers are ridiculously talented.

Lukes has clearly not been right, and now the Blue Jays know why. It's just very bizarre that it took this long to figure out what was going on, and to think that Toronto has just been putting Lukes out there while he could hardly handle the task at hand.