The Red Sox Are Skipping Steven Wright's Next Start Because He Injured His Shoulder Running The Bases
Nice manager ya got there, Red Sox fans. This isn’t even a hindsight’s 20/20 thing, either. You take one look at that play in real time, and you see a guy who looks like he was in the stands at the start of the game, and he won a contest to play one inning with the Boston Red Sox. What could go wrong?
The answer is everything. Everything could go wrong, and it did, because now Steven Wright’s shoulder is hurt from diving back into the bag when the pitcher didn’t even throw over to the base. Gee, I wonder how such a mistake could’ve been avoided? I dunno. Maybe use somebody off the bench who actually has experience running the bases? Like, literally anybody but him, the guy who has been one of your best starting pitchers all year. Pitchers are going to be used as pinch runners in National League games. It’s very common. It’s part of the game (and one of many reasons why I can’t stand the National League), but Wright seemed like an odd choice at the time, and it obviously wasn’t the right choice, as demonstrated by the fact that he’s unable to start on Thursday.
Now, this story is fresh, but there are already conspiracy theories floating around that this is a way to skip Wright’s start because it’s going to be 100 degrees and humid on Thursday, and he can’t pitch in the humidity. Unless my iPhone weather app is lying to me, it’s only supposed to be a high of 91 tomorrow, which, yeah, is still hot, but it’s fucking August. That’s no hotter than any other day this month. I’m not buying that conspiracy theory, and it certainly doesn’t make sense that the Red Sox would go with a coverup story that would make their manager look even more incompetent than he already does.
With Wright missing a start — which honestly isn’t the worst thing in the world, because let’s not forget that he’s on pace for 213.2 innings, and his career high prior to this season was 72.2 innings — Eduardo Rodriguez gets the ball on Thursday in the series finale against the Yankees, David Price in the series opener against the Diamondbacks on Friday, and Clay Buchholz slithering his way back into the rotation on Saturday. Yippee fuckin’ skippy.