Sore knee forces Paxton out early
CHICAGO — James Paxton was cruising through four twohit innings against the White
Sox Saturday at Guaranteed
Rate Field when he was unexpectedly pulled after just 63 pitches.
Two innings later, the Red Sox announced he had been lifted because of right knee soreness.
“I just couldn’t quite brace my front side,” Paxton said after the Red Sox’ 5-4 loss. “I was having a little bit of a hard time getting to the front of my breaking balls.”
Paxton believes he will be able to make his next start after initially feeling the injury during his previous outing, a win Monday against the Twins.
“We’ll do some more work on it and hopefully get to a point where I don’t think about it next time out,” Paxton added.
Paxton allowed one run and struck out three without a walk, the lone damage against him coming on a Yasmani Grandal home run in the second inning.
The lefthander has been one of the Sox’ most consistent starters since joining the rotation, going 3-1 with a 3.19 ERA and 54 strikeouts over 42‚ innings in eight starts.
Paxton didn’t appear to lose any velocity. His final pitch was a fastball at 95.5 miles per hour, which matches his average (95.4) for the month of June.
The Red Sox’ rotation depth has taken a hit in recent days.
Corey Kluber was placed on the 15-day injured list Wednesday because of shoulder inflammation, days after Tanner Houck was lost to a facial fracture.
Chris Sale (shoulder) is on the 60-day IL.
SS issue lingers
Kiké Hernández was confident he could bring stability to the Red Sox at shortstop in the absence of Trevor Story and
Adalberto Mondesi. But after 14 errors, 12 on throws, the team moved on from Hernández on a day-to-day basis.
The Red Sox’ situation at the position, though, isn’t quite about Hernández. The idea of having him be an everyday shortstop, a position he took on with little experience as a starter, was always a tall order for Hernández, whose true experience falls into the category of a utility player.
More so, the situation is about how the reliance on Hernández at shortstop, a failed experiment, has led to even more instability at the position.
Yu Chang has been removed from two rehab assignments as he continues to recover from hamate bone surgery. He has missed 54 games while on the injured list. On Friday, Pablo Reyes went on the IL because of an abdominal strain.
It’s still just June and the Red Sox have already rolled out seven shortstops, including rookie David Hamilton, who made his second straight start Saturday. Besides Hernández, who has played 436 innings at the position, only Chang and Reyes have played 90-plus innings at the position.
Last year, Christian Arroyo had the second-most innings played at short (76) behind Xander Bogaerts.
The absence of structure and dependability has made it a daily grind for the coaching staff as it tries to fill such a gaping hole at such a premier position.
“That’s part of our challenge as a front office,” said chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom on Saturday. “We have to try to construct a roster that fits together, a roster that works, and then have layers of depth behind it so that whatever happens, even if you don’t have all of your original 26 available, whatever happens, that you feel that giving your manager and your staff, good options to go win a ballgame.”
Defense-first Story
Story has said he could return from elbow surgery as early as July as a designated hitter and by August at shortstop. Given the roster construction and how crowded the Red Sox are at the DH position, August sounds more likely.
“Shortstop is the end goal [for Story],” said Bloom. “We don’t want to do anything that slows down our progress towards that. I think it’s a really good thing that he feels he’s going to be able to contribute sooner than that. I think that says a lot about him, who he is and how he’s feeling. But there’s obviously a lot of different things that come with that.”
The offense will take care of itself. Defense, specifically throwing, remains the priority.
“It’s obviously [more focus] on the defense and all the different throws he’s going to have to make,” said Bloom. “Just the overall workload.”
Mondesi restarts
The Red Sox shut down Mondesi (knee) from all baseball activity a couple of weeks ago. Bloom said Mondesi has restarted his ramp-up with the hope that he could — though there’s still no timeline — get into game action this year.
Mondesi, acquired from the Royals in the offseason following Story’s injury, hasn’t been able to get beyond the threshold required to play competitively.
“Structurally, he’s fine,” said Bloom. “We knew from the start there was some ground we were going to have to make up in terms of strengthening. We just haven’t been able to get him past the discomfort, or soreness, feeling in it. And so it’s been a little bit of a start, stop. We’ve tried different things that just haven’t gotten there yet. Hopefully we will be able to solve it.”