Injuries Injure Red Sox

Who is hurt, what it means, and what happens now. Also other things.

This is my fault. I wrote paragraphs - that’s plural! - on liking Spring Training. It’s fun, I said! It’s great, I said! There’s no downside, I said! The world heard all this and thought, I’ll show this guy fun. I’ll show this guy great. Here, eat downside!

Or maybe I had nothing to do with it and this is just the way things go. Regardless, the Red Sox, not exactly a paragon of depth to begin with, have lost two major pieces to injury in the last week.

The fun was fun while it lasted, so, I guess, let’s get in to it.

Vaughn Grissom

The first injury was to new and theoretical second baseman Vaughn “Not Trent” Grissom. Grissom was and is the prize for buying Chris Sale a one-way plane ticket to Atlanta (and buying a second ticket for a suitcase full of $18 million helped as well). He’s a young (23-years-young) and athletic guy, and that’s quite a get for a 35-year-old pitcher with severe injury issues on a one-year deal.

Ironic then that Sale seems, at the moment, to be completely healthy while Grissom is the one who suffered a groin injury and is likely to miss Opening Day. Missing Opening Day is, in and of itself, significant, but not particularly important. There are 161 other days that are equally important, but that’s not really what “missing Opening Day” means. “Missing Opening Day” is shorthand for “going to miss some games, we’re not sure how many, but maybe many.” Groins, as I’m sure you all know, are fickle things, and pulling one too hard or in the wrong way is… actually, I’m just going to stop this right here.

The Red Sox were 26th in WAR by second basemen in 2023 and 20th in ‘22 so the prospect of adding Grissom, even if he’s just a league average guy, in 2024 was an exciting one. This injury doesn’t mean Grissom will miss months (we’ll get to “missing months” momentarily), but this likely means an IL stint and maybe even a minor league rehab if the absence is long enough. For a team dealing with a razor thin shot at making something of this 2024 season, it’s not a great start.

I’m speculating a bit but it doesn’t take much extrapolation to expect some significant time before Grissom is ready to step in and contribute meaningfully. In the meantime, it looks like the Red Sox will turn to Enmanual Valdez and Pablo Reyes to fill the void at the keystone. Valdez hit well enough last season, he has some pop, but defense isn’t a strong suit and left-handed pitchers give him fits. He’s more of a part time DH or corner outfielder masquerading as a starting second baseman. Reyes is a more capable defender, but he’s a below average hitter, or maybe more of what we’ve grown accustomed to seeing from second base in this post-Dustin Pedroia world.

Long term this is probably not a big deal, though I wouldn’t call it good. If the team were expecting to compete for a playoff spot in 2024 I’d be more concerned but, well… yeah.

Lucas Giolito

It’s funny. Not the injury. That’s not funny, but I was just talking to some Phillies fan friends of mine about the Phillies’ offseason, more specifically how they’ve spent over $300 million paying Aaron Nola and Zack Wheeler into their late 30s. Both are excellent pitchers, both good and durable. But durable, I argued, is durable until it’s not. The Red Sox saw this with Chris Sale, who averaged 206 innings pitched every season from 2012 through 2017. From 2018 on, he’s averaged 76 per season. Once that line gets crossed, it’s hard to go back.

What did we hear about Giolito the moment the Red Sox signed him? He might not be great but he’ll give you innings. Innings! Innings we will get! We don’t care (apparently) how good those innings are, but there will be innings, copious innings!

Now, as it turns out, there will not be innings. Giolito, it was revealed yesterday, has a tear in his UCL and a strained flexor tendon. Neither of those things is, as the doctors say, good. The prognosis is that there will be more doctors seen, more opinions given, and then very likely there will be surgery performed of the season-ending variety. It’s too early to say when the Red Sox might expect to see Giolito back on a mound again, but it seems very likely, as in somewhere between 100 and 206 percent, that Giolito’s 2024 season is over, and if it’s Tommy John surgery, then a significant portion of his 2025 season is in doubt as well.

I wasn’t the biggest fan of the Giolito signing, but whether it was the best value or best expenditure of resources, it undeniably fit a purpose. Losing Giolito undeniably puts the Red Sox rotation in a spot. All the swing guys who are probably best out of the pen and questionable in the rotation, your Whitlocks, your Houcks, are now required to start. Another injury and the Red Sox will have to move Josh Winckowski from the bullpen to the rotation as well.

We’re not a week into March and already it’s fair to wonder where the innings are going to come from. Can the Red Sox rightfully expect 400 innings of any level of quality from Whitlock and Houck? I have an answer but I don’t think you’re going to like it.

Are there any answers you will like? Richard Fitts threw 150 some odd innings last season for the Yankees Double-A affiliate. He came over in the Alex Verdugo deal. He seems fine and the Red Sox seem to like him (which is good because they just traded for him) but expecting him to be the team’s sixth starter is, frankly, ridiculous. Similarly so for Brandon Walter, another likely denizen of the Worcester starting rotation. Walter is 27 and got lit up (which is bad) in 23 innings in Boston last season, which isn’t to say he can’t contribute, just that you’d like him to be further down the depth chart than, uh, sixth.

Fortunately for the Red Sox, both Jordan Montgomery and Blake Snell are somehow still on the free agent market. What luck! The Red Sox are $30 million under the luxury tax threshold, so there! Problem solved, right? Well, no. The Red Sox are reportedly “in contact” with Montgomery’s agent (who is also Snell’s agent who is Scott Boras), but, well, I’ll put it this way. I was in contact with the guy who cut me off at 39th and Hawthorne Boulevard the other day and I was never close to signing him.

Now though, perhaps things have changed on the Red Sox end of things. Perhaps they’ll see that A) they have money, B) there are two good starters available for essentially just that (Snell would cost a draft pick too), and C) the team badly needs starters who can, if nothing else, give them innings (because that’s never burned anyone before).

Perhaps they’ll put A, B, and C together and make a deal. Perhaps. But you know what? I sure don’t expect it. This organization hasn’t shown that, baring Scott Boras offering them a deal, something he’s literally never done before, they’re going to put money into this roster. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if, instead of reading the Giolito injury as a call to add another starter, they saw it as a cautionary tale and further data arguing against signing a free agent starter such as Snell or Montgomery.

Or maybe I’m wrong and they call up ol’ Scott and knock a deal out by mealtime, Dombrowski-style. I don’t know. I’m an outsider, remember? It doesn’t seem like their style but also, whereas the Grissom injury is bad, losing Giolito is a disaster. It’s not that he was going to be good so much as it’s that he was going to be so much better than their other options.

I still like Spring Training though. Shhh!

Thanks for reading.