Before, there were questions about why the Red Sox were willing to trade Lowell if they still had to pick up three-fourths of his salary. Now, there are even more questions — mainly, how were the Red Sox unaware that Lowell had a torn ligament in his thumb that would prevent him from passing a physical?
According to Boston.com, Red Sox assistant GM Ben Cherington discussed the situation on Sirius XM Radio on Monday and indicated that the team was aware of the injury but didn’t quite grasp its seriousness.
“I guess hindsight is 20/20 in these cases,” Cherington said. “When the initial injury happened, he nor our medical staff really felt it was that serious. It was just one of those things were he got jammed a little bit, felt it a little bit during a BP swing. It was toward the end of the year, we were trying to get ready for the playoffs and so we didn’t want to take any chances, give him some time off to get rested. And even at the end of the playoffs, in our exit physical, he barely made mention of it.”
Obviously, the injury was bad enough to be of concern to the Rangers — and serious enough to warrant surgery. Still, though, Cherington and the Red Sox are optimistic that Lowell will make a full recovery by spring training, and the assistant GM still thinks the team can find a new home for him once he proves he is healthy.
“All the reports indicate that he should be 100 percent in spring training,” Cherington said. “[So we’ll] let him go out there and play and he’s either an important part of our team moving forward, a guy who obviously provides a good bat at third base, so we have flexibility with [Kevin Youkilis], who can move between first and third. Mike’s an excellent hitter, an excellent hitter at Fenway Park, and so he’ll be an important part of our team — and certainly if there’s interest down the road we can consider that.”
