A happy team is a healthy team

Everyone knows about injuries in Baseball. Every team gets them, they are a part of the game, conditioning prevents them, and depth makes up for them. Right. Sure. I know, I know, I know. That’s all well and good, but injuries DERAILED the Red Sox last year. We had everything from bad knees and shoulders to irregular heartbeats and cancer. Half of our starting pitching went down and two thirds of our outfield missed a big chunk of time. Not to mention any catcher that wore a Red Sox uniform ended up hurt. It’s easy to drop from first to third in the standings when your team is pieced together with AA guys and waiver wire pickups.

Now I know it’s only Spring Training, but I want to keep track of who is getting hurt from the very beginning. This will help me continue season long tirades against individuals that spend more time with their limbs in ice rather than in gloves and cleats. Not too many guys are members of the walking wounded club yet, but there are three bodies that have seen better days.

Mike Timlin- left oblique: Old guys are always gonna have problems. As the season wears down, they do as well. So it is a REALLY bad sign to see Timlin start hurting before he’s even faced an opposing batter. He’s already started working out again, but his planned appearance against the Twins in the opener Wednesday has been pushed back a few days. Remember when everyone was blaming Timlin’s troubles last year on the WBC? Well maybe we should have been blaming father time.

Craig Hansen- back: Young pitchers who get stiff backs get me a little annoyed until I remember that the act of pitching is an unnatural movement. The human body wasn’t meant to throw a ball that fast and you do damage to yourself every time you do it. That being said, this kid was supposed to be the closer of the future. What happened to that? Now it’s being said Hansen will be lucky to make the bigs when the season starts. Another satisfied Scott Boras client.

Matt Clement- shoulder/brain: If Clement was a horse, he’d be Barbaro. If he was a ship, he’d be the Titanic. If he was a Yankee, he’d be Carl Pavano. He (and many of his deluded fans surprisingly) are holding out hopes that he will be able to pitch sometime this year. That’s ridiculous. Even if he gets a clean bill of health, he’s weak-sauce mentally. This guy hasn’t been right since he took a liner to the head back in ’05 (and he was starting to come apart before that). This guy has done nothing but not live up to expectations, so much so that I bet he WILL pitch this year just because I expect him not to (he’ll still suck though).

Anyway, the injuries are not much to speak of just yet and I hope it stays that way.

To bring up a happier topic, despite my thinking the first game was Thursday (don’t know why I thought that) it is actually tonight against the cross town spring rivals from Minnesota.

There will be REAL Red Sox baseball being played tonight. I can’t explain how happy that makes me.