Smith out for ’18; under knife today Deal complete
RED SOX NOTEBOOK
BALTIMORE — After three doctors all agreed on the damage to Carson Smith’s shoulder, the once promising Red Sox reliever will undergo shoulder surgery today that is likely to end his season.
Smith injured himself after his outing on May 14, when he was angry about allowing a run in the eighth inning of a 6-5 loss to the Oakland A’s and threw his glove in the dugout, causing a separation in his shoulder.
While Smith later said he was fatigued from too much usage, which may have led to the injury, Red Sox manager Alex Cora disagreed.
And after the team announced his surgery yesterday, team trainer Brad Pearson spoke to reporters — the first time he’s done that — to describe the injury and the surgery. In Pearson’s eyes, Smith’s shoulder was relatively healthy until the incident. The throwing of the glove was the primary factor of the injury.
“There’s firsts for everything,” Pearson said. “It’s not something I would’ve typically seen, but he threw it pretty hard, and it’s possible we found out that’s another way you can hurt your shoulder.
“He had done a really good job with all his rehab up to that point, including making his shoulder strong. I think it’s a freak thing. It’s unfortunate that it happened. Who knows where his arm was in space when he was throwing. Sometimes most of the injuries happen on the awkward plays. I would classify this as an awkward motion, and just bad luck.” Did fatigue play a factor? “I look at is he just pitched in a game; anybody who comes out of a game having just pitched is going to have a more fatigued body, shoulder, arm, elbow, whatever,” Pearson said. “So when he says fatigued, yeah, he just pitched.”
After spending more than a year recovering from Tommy John surgery, Smith returned late last season and showed promise with his devastating slider and sinking two-seamer. He had a 3.77 ERA this year, primarily used as a set-up man, before his injury.
It took nearly a month to decide on surgery.
“We wanted to do our due diligence and make sure we had a pretty clear understanding of what damage had been done to his shoulder,” Pearson said. “Taking a pitcher out of the season and doing a shoulder surgery is not something anybody wants to do lightly.
“I think everybody pretty much had consensus that there was suspicions of anterior instability, and any time you’re looking at a situation like that, the rehab outcomes are not quite as tolerated as you would hope for. So after a lot of deliberations and discussions and most importantly talking to Carson and what his desires were, I think surgery seemed like the right option. That was the consensus of all the doctors.”
Smith is unlikely to return until 2019.
“This season is probably not looking too good,” Pearson said.
Betts back to bench
One day on, one day off for Mookie Betts.
After his 1-for-5 game on Monday in his return after missing two weeks with an abdomen strain, Betts was held out of the lineup last night.
“I’m just going to work back into playing every day,” he said. “One day at a time, go from there.”
Betts said he felt no pain and felt “perfectly normal” after feeling “amazing” in his return on Monday.
He expected to be available off the bench to pinchhit. He’s also trying to take it easier in his pregame routine while he continues to recover.
“I’ll probably scale it back a little, just to make sure,” he said. “If I wanted to, I could take a full workload and be all right.
“We’ll see what happens, what (Cora) says about next series, but I think I should be playing every day soon.”
The Red Sox acquired a minor league outfielder who has twice tested positive for a drug of abuse and was suspended 50 games earlier this year.
To finalize their trade of left-hander Roenis Elias to the Seattle Mariners, the Sox received Eric Filia, a left-handed-hitting outfielder with a career .343 average and .888 OPS over three minor league seasons.
The 25-year-old was a 20th-round draft pick in 2014, led the Arizona Fall League with a .408 average last year and has shown impressive plate discipline in his minor league career, with 114 walks to 68 strikeouts, but comes with that concerning past.
In January it was announced that he had tested positive again for a drug of abuse, which is considered either a recreational drug such as marijuana or cocaine, or a stimulant like amphetamines, according to the minor league baseball testing program.
Slow and steady
When Dustin Pedroia was placed on the disabled list for a second time on June 2, the Red Sox figured he’d have to rest for two days before he could begin baseball activities again.
It’s been 10 days, but still no baseball activity.
“Not yet,” Cora said. “Just feeling better every day. He’s doing stuff in the training room, the gym. He’ll hit all that stuff in that cage, off the tee, stuff like that. Until the inflammation goes away, we won’t know.”