ONCE BRIGHT STAR WHIFFS
Demoted Bosox arm rips ‘damn Yankees’
TAMPA — If Joe Girardi had known the Red Sox wanted to play extra innings Thursday night in Fort Myers so they could get one more look at pitcher Clayton mortensen, the Yanks would’ve batted one more inning, Girardi said Friday.
“But there was no communication and usually there is,” Girardi said. “And it’s not like this is something new. There’s a lot of tie ballgames in spring training that end in the ninth inning.”
Turns out, it was mortensen’s last chance, at least this spring. The Red Sox sent him down Friday, prompting Girardi to say, “Then I feel bad. I feel bad when anyone gets sent down.”
Mortensen was angry he didn’t get to pitch. He thought the “damn Yankees” cost him a shot at impressing Sox brass. He was quoted by the website WEEI.COM as saying, “I was pretty pissed, actually. I finally get my chance to get into an inning, something that I believe my role would kind of be —late innings, tie ballgame, come in against the Yankees — I was all fired up, ready to go.”
Girardi, however, wasn’t taking blame for anything. When he heard that Red Sox manager/ chief Yankee provocateur Bobby Valentine was irked, saying it was “not very courteous” for girardi not to want to play bonus baseball, he had little reaction.
“I’ve got to worry about our club and keeping our club healthy and not putting people in bad situations and making sure our club is ready to play,” said girardi, who did not want to use too many pitchers with two split-squad games looming Friday. “He has to do the same thing for his club. As I said before, I’m going to worry about our guys.”
Valentine was quoted by the Boston Globe Friday saying he was “not annoyed. I’m as annoyed as I was (Thursday) night, which isn’t very annoyed.”