DUNEDIN, Fla. – Like countless pitchers before them, Aaron Loup and Gavin Floyd found themselves walking a tightrope last year. Then they slipped.

Too soon, Loup tried to come back from the first injury of his career. Too late, Floyd realized the difference between starting and relieving, and it led to his fourth serious injury in four years.

Once mainstays of their pitching staffs, Loup and Floyd have become footnotes in the discussion about the Blue Jays’ bullpen plans. Barring injury, five of seven spots are locked up.

Loup is healthy again after a frustrating, up-and-down season in 2016. With a good spring, he could stick.

“I feel great,” he says. “I’m excited to get things going.”

Floyd is uncertain.

“It’s still a process,” he says. “I’m not where I want to be. There’s still work to do.”

They came into the 2016 season from opposite directions, Loup on the disabled list with a flexor strain in his elbow, Floyd seemingly strong again after fracturing his elbow twice in two years and before that, undergoing Tommy John surgery.

Loup admits now he came back several weeks too soon, so desperate was he to contribute. He split his season between Toronto and triple-A Buffalo. “It was a tough year for me,” he says.

Floyd admits now that he still prepared like a starter even though he was a reliever for the first time. He threw too many pitches in the bullpen. He can’t be certain, but he thinks his self-imposed workload set him up for a fall.

He was done for good before the end of June. The diagnosis was a strained shoulder capsule.

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Last year, Aaron Loup sat on a tractor and noticed his elbow was sore. Photo by John Lott.

Loup, a sidewinding left-hander, jumped from double-A to the majors in July 2012. For the rest of that season and the next three, he was a solid situational lefty, with a sweeping curveball and a sinking fastball that lit up a lot of 92s and 93s on the radar gun.

On Feb. 28 last year, while his fellow pitchers warmed up in the outfield, Loup watched from a seat on a tractor the grounds crew used to drag the infield. A spot near his elbow was a little sore. No big deal, he thought. He did not look worried.

It took exactly three months for him to get back on a major-league mound.

“At first, we didn’t think it was that bad but it ended up being worse than we thought,” he said. “It took me longer to come back, and then when I actually got back, I probably still wasn’t completely ready to be back.

“I think that’s mainly what hurt me, because when I got back I didn’t have the velocity, didn’t have the consistency to throw strikes in the zone. Usually when I miss, it’s either down or off the plate, and I was missing up or over the plate, which ended up hurting me.”

He spent June, July and August on a yo-yo, logging a 1.83 ERA in 20 games for Buffalo while getting called up for a few games here and there with the Blue Jays. Promoted for good in September, he allowed no runs in nine outings, but rarely did manager John Gibbons trust him in pressure situations.

After his teammates left him behind to rehab in Florida, Loup’s restlessness grew. This thing should be getting better faster, he thought. But he was making progress, maybe just enough, and wow, did he want to be back with the Blue Jays.

“Yeah, that was the whole thing,” he said. “Being stuck in Florida, doing nothing other than rehabbing. You’re anxious to get back and get going because you’ve been stuck from the beginning of spring training to the middle of May in Florida, not around the team. Basically, all you’re doing is, you throw a workout and you go home and sit around all day. You’re ready to get back and you kind of rush it a little bit.”

He paused, then added: “You live and you learn.”

Loup was lights-out in Buffalo, but things changed during his callups.

“Maybe it was the injury, maybe it was the lack of confidence, not pitching successful while you’re up there,” he said. “That weighs on you. I got up there too early, got hit around a little bit. It takes that confidence away. Then you get back up there again, and you try to get some confidence and things still go bad. It just piles on.”

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Gavin Floyd made the Blue Jays as a reliever last year. Photo by Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

Floyd had been a steady starter for the White Sox before the injury jinx struck. Tommy John surgery is pretty common, but a pitcher doesn’t often break that pointy bone in his elbow. Floyd did it two years in a row.

But last spring he felt healthy and hopeful. And after he made the team as a reliever, he seemed to take to his new role, posting a 1.65 ERA over his first 13 appearances while holding opposing batters to a .145 average.

Over his next 15 outings, Floyd’s ERA was 6.75. And on June 25, while pitching against his old team in Chicago, he threw four pitches and took himself out of the game.

His shoulder had bothered him off and on for a while.

“I just thought I could deal with it,” he said. “It wasn’t that significant. That one pitch where I took myself out of the game was definitely more significant.”

He first thought he could return and help the team in September. But the healing was slow. He started to throw, then had to back off, and then try again.

“It was not fun,” he said. “I wanted to get back if that was possible for the end of the season. Long-toss was very tough. I got on the mound and saw progress, but it was still a grind.”

By the time the pain began to fade and his strength began to build, he had to admit it was too late to return to the Jays.

He had also come to realize what might have led to his latest injury.

“I had a starter’s mentality in the bullpen when I was getting ready,” he said. “I just threw a lot. I wanted to have a good feel for everything before I went out there. Most guys just get warm and then use their eight (warmup) pitches out there (on the mound). I tried to make that adjustment too late, I think. But I was going in there a lot, with a starter’s routine in the bullpen. I think I was tired.”

Floyd reached the majors at 21. He is 34 now, with 1,250 big-league innings on his ledger. He wonders if he can make still another comeback.

“Am I worried about it?” he replies to an obvious question. “Yes, absolutely. Every time I get injured, I worry that this could be it. You wonder what the next chapter’s going to be like.”

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Aaron Loup is hoping to secure one of the vacant bullpen spots on the Blue Jays. Photo by John Lott.

When the Blue Jays open their Grapefruit League schedule on Saturday, a fierce battle for two bullpen spots will begin. Including Loup, and depending on Floyd’s progress, as many as eight pitchers could be in the mix.

Among those hoping to turn some heads this spring are Danny Barnes, Ryan Borucki, Matt Dermody, Bo Schultz and Ryan Tepera. On Tuesday, manager John Gibbons said he has been impressed with the work of Chris Smith, who earned a late September callup after a sensational season at double-A last year.

The competition will likely run through the late stages of spring training. And as Loup and Floyd can attest, health will also influence the outcome.

Because pitchers get hurt. And when they do, they get left behind to rehab and fret and wonder. Loup and Floyd can attest to that too.