Lester Sharp...A Shot In The Back For JD Drew In Boston

John Lester threw another two perfect innings in a 9-8 Boston Red Sox loss to the Reds. It was his second straight great two inning spring stint. His place as Boston's solid number two starter is locked and secured, with the key thrown away. That is not true of Brad Penny, the projected number five starter of the Boston rotation. We will not be seeing him pitch in a grapefruit league game any time soon. In fact, he won't pitch, IF everything goes right, until mid-April. First, let me give you the Sox pitching stats from yesterday and then I'll get further into the Penny and JD Drew matters, two injuries that this team did not need, not this early. NOT EVER...

BOSTON ip h r er bb so hr era

J Lester 2 0 0 0 0 2 0 0.00
H Okajima 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.00
R Ramirez 1 4 4 3 0 0 2 13.50 **
M Delcarmen 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0.00
J Tazawa 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0.00
W Littleton 2/3 3 5 5 1 2 1 23.60 **
M James 1/3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.00
F Doubront 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0.00
H Jones 1 0 0 0 0 2 0 0.00

OK, on to Brad Penny. He had to abort his warm up yesterday because of shoulder "weakness." It's almost certain that we will not see him pitch until about two weeks into the regular season. There are many off days at the beginning into the middle of April and a fifth starter will not be needed until then. Let's hope he can get this behind him, just a faint and obscure memory fading with time. Manager Tito Francona had this to say...

“With all the off days we have in the beginning of the season, what we’re really trying to do is get Penny healthy so he can go out and pitch like he can pitch,” Francona said. “So for me to sit here and say we’d like to get him for that third game of the season would be the wrong message to send.”

Here's what Brad Penny himself had to say...

“I don’t think the shoulder strength is quite where it needed to be yet for the workload I’ve been doing,” Penny said, “so it was better to take it easy right now than to get out there in the first week of April and have it flare up on me. It’s better to be careful now than later. In a perfect world, I wouldn’t have fatigued a little bit. Last year was pretty bad,” Penny said.

Last year's limited appearances were do to the same shoulder. I have a bad feeling about this, much as I do about JD Drew's back. He's jetting to Boston to have a shot in his ailing back. A misplaced disc is said to be the cause, but the way I look at it, he had the whole damn winter to take care of this nagging and probably season long injury. I feel strongly about this and am quite mad. I went through the same thing and the pain was so horrific, I had it taken care of. For all the millions he's being paid, he should have done the same f*cking thing. No sympathy from me, that's for sure.

That's it for this Wednesday morning, yet another frigid one here in north central Connecticut. For the record, right now at 6:18am est, it is 5.2 degrees F. Too cold for me, I guess. I used to love the cold and the snow and everything winter, but I guess the years have caught up with me too quickly. Click on the title for more Red Sox news, Manny looks close to signing his two year deal with LA, and as always, BE WELL. Arivaderci. Ciao. L'chaim. See ya.