But whether he received a cortisone shot for it remains to be seen.
"I don't know what all's in it,” manager Terry Francona said prior to Tuesday’s series opener against Arizona. “It's a nerve route injection. To be honest with you, I don't know. I just got the facts. … [A cortisone injection] sounds right. You can go with that if you want."
Regardless of what kind of shot he received, Scutaro is out of the lineup for Tuesday’s contest, and the treatment should help to alleviate some stress on Scutaro’s neck that seems to have been bothering him for quite some time.
“[There was] pretty much have pain everywhere every day, and then when the game started, it started feeling better, and later in the night when you go to bed, it's a little worse and then the next morning it's like totally bad,” Scutaro said. “That's pretty much the routine.”
If nothing else, the shot should give him a couple extra days to recover from the daily grind as well as decreasing some of the swelling. It’s not a cure-all, but it’s a step.
“You can't tell the next day [if it feels better] — you have to wait a couple of days,” Scutaro said. “Right now, it feels the same; I have to wait, I guess.”
Francona was happy with the results of the procedure, regardless of his familiarity with it, or the lack thereof.
“I think everything went real well,” Francona said of the procedure. “I think he really wanted to play [on Tuesday]. Just talking to all the medical people, it sounded like if we could give him one more day to let everything work, he would be better off long-term, so that's what we'll do.”
Still, if Scutaro could have chosen, he’d rather be batting leadoff for the Red Sox instead of Dan Nava.
"He's been really good about not complaining about it, so if it's been bothering him — which I don't doubt — he hasn't said much,” Francona said. “He really likes to play. I think he's afraid if he says something to us, we won't play him. He's been doing a good job with the medical people keeping it under control, but I think we kind of pointed to [the off-day on Monday] to get it done."
The 34-year-old shortstop has been a spark at the top of Boston’s lineup this season, hitting .282 – tying a career-best mark achieved with Toronto in 2009 – with an on-base percentage of .357. In this weekend’s series against Philadelphia, he hit .357 with two doubles and three RBIs.
Still, it’s better to play it safe than risk exacerbating the injury.
"When you start talking about irritating nerves, and then all of a sudden you can't get stronger — you start getting worn down and muscles atrophy and things like that — that's really not what we're shooting for,” Francona said. “This game's hard enough."
