Red Sox Must Survive Yet Another Devastating Blow in Dustin Pedroia’s DL Trip

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Aug 20, 2010

Red Sox Must Survive Yet Another Devastating Blow in Dustin Pedroia's DL Trip The Red Sox' season has been a study in survival. Their ability to stay alive will now face its biggest test.

Dustin Pedroia, who came off the disabled list Tuesday, will be out for at least two weeks to allow his left foot to heal more completely. If and when he returns to the lineup in September, he may or may not be joining a club with a pulse.

When Pedroia was placed on the DL Friday for the second time this season, the Sox had 40 games to play and remained five-and-a-half games out in the wild-card race. Realistically, there is time to make a move. However, they are a .500 team (22-22) in games Pedroia has not played since first going down with a broken left foot June 25. In the same amount of games with him in the lineup since early May, they are 30-14.

That's an eight-game swing that makes one wonder where they would be in the playoff race had he never been hurt, and where they will be when his foot heals enough to allow him to play again. Playing .500 ball over the next two weeks — which includes three games at wild card-leading Tampa Bay — could present a daunting, and potentially fruitless, stretch run.

You lose an MVP, you pay the price. How steep a price remains to be seen.

Jed Lowrie, Bill Hall, the injured Eric Patterson and Friday's call-up, Yamaico Navarro, will all factor into the equation at second base. Even on their best nights, they cannot duplicate the presence that Pedroia provides, although to hear the All-Star say it, Boston won't miss him one bit.

"We'll be fine, guys will step up. They have all year," he said. "I'm just one guy. We've had guys go down all year and guys have stepped in to help us win. We still have a great chance of getting in the playoffs and winning the whole thing."

While it's never safe to doubt Pedroia, that is a pretty ambitious statement. Hoping for enough production from the aforementioned quartet of second base fill-ins is one thing. Boston's chances of making Pedroia's boast come to fruition may depend on how much he can help out in September.

For that, the Red Sox' game of survival turns into a test of their patience.

"When it heals, he'll play," manager Terry Francona said.

The silver lining is that Pedroia was shut down before he did any further damage to the foot. Had he pressed through the pain he was feeling this week, he would have risked a longer layoff that may have included season-ending surgery and a potential impact on his career. Essentially, he is at the same stage of his recovery that he was a few weeks ago. The foot simply needs more time before he can safely play the all-out Pedroia style of baseball without risking something serious.

Forcing the issue when that is the potential outcome would not have been wise. Still, Pedroia deserves loads of credit for trying.

"I knew that there was a chance that if I came back and played and it didn't do well that I would be out," he said. "I knew that, they told me that. It just [stinks] that it happened. I thought I would play a couple of days and that if I was sore I would have a day or two off, be able to be fine.

"It's not the way it's working out right now."

Not much is working out for the Red Sox, who have placed eight players on the DL in August alone and 24 this season. They've managed to survive it all up to this point, even without Pedroia in the lineup for all but two games this month, but they never made up any significant ground while he was out.

Whether they can over the next two weeks or so is crucial. Their survival may depend upon it.

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