Jed Lowrie, too, thought this year would go a little differently. For one, he expected to play more than 19 games.
After submitting a promising campaign during spring training that only improved once Julio Lugo went down with an injury, Lowrie was sidelined by a left wrist problem similar to the one that hampered him at the end of 2008. He underwent surgery, and after making a comeback after the All-Star break, he went down again with yet another nerve-related injury in the same wrist.
Now, it’s unclear whether or not Lowrie will return before 2010.
The 25-year-old shortstop — once expected to be Boston’s shortstop of the future — will embark on yet another rehab assignment Monday. If all goes well, he could return to the club for September callups.
But everything is still a big question mark, and nobody is more frustrated than Lowrie.
“It’s getting to the point in the season where it either responds well and [I can] play, or it doesn’t,” he told Boston.com. “There’s really no gray area at this point. I can’t say I haven’t thought about [the prospect of not playing again this year]…. When it feels great, you’re like, ‘Oh, let’s go do it.’ When it feels bad, it’s like, ‘Well, I might be done for the year.’ I think it feels better more than it feels worse. We’ll see how it feels.”
Lowrie is still young. He, hopefully, still has plenty of good years ahead of him. But it’s hard for him to sit back and watch, enduring setback after setback, during the years he should be in his prime.
“It’s hard going through this,” he told the Web site. “I feel like I’ve maintained a pretty good attitude, where I haven’t gotten too low. I feel like I’ve been treading water, trying to keep my head above. There’s been some times where it’s been pretty tough. At the same time, there are a lot of people dealing with a lot more problems than what I’m dealing with. I’m not asking for sympathy by saying I’ve been through a hard time. It’s just that it’s been frustrating.”
Right now, the shortstop of the future is Alex Gonzalez. Obviously, it’s not going to stay that way. So when Lowrie is ready — and everyone hopes he’ll be ready soon — his work should be cut out for him.
