| 24 June 2010
Daisuke Matsuzaka will make his return from a very strange DL stint tonight. 15 days ago, Matsuzaka had some pain in his forearm during a pre-game warm-up and was immediately placed on the DL. The Sox were forced to use all relievers in that game but earned a win.
Now he's back to frustrate us all again, but there's a twist to this story...
Mike Lowell is will be placed on the DL to make room for Matsuzaka, enabling the Sox to keep Josh Reddick, Daniel Nava and RP Dustin Richardson on the roster.
The Sox will use Lowell's nagging hip injury as the cause for the DL stint, but Lowell has logged just one at-bat since June 13, indicating that the Sox may be giving themselves some time to coordinate a trade or outright release of Lowell in the next two weeks.
Truthfully, Lowell hasn't been given a chance to showcase his worth to other ballclubs, so it's hard to imagine anyone offering a trade to the Sox at this time. Any any team that was caght sniffing around was quick to demand that the Sox pay all or most of him remaining salary.
That ain't gonna happen, so the Sox may finally be deciding that releasing Lowell is in the best interest of the team and Lowell himself.
The Sox may regret letting him go if the dog days of summer bring more injuries to the infield, but for now the Sox need depth in the bullpen and on the outfield more than they need an aging 3B/1B/DH.
I'm not sure what will happen next with Mikey... maybe the Sox are simply taking advantage of the system and his injury to help them get through this NL road trip and he'll be back on the roster in July. I guess we'll find out.
As for tonight, the Sox need a win in a bad way after blowing last night's games and wasting too many opportunities on Tuesday. I have no idea what to expect from Matsuzaka. He's never faced the Rockies and is 6-4 with a 4.01 ERA in interleague play. That's not very exciting, but he did blank the Indians through 8 in his last start on June 7th... hopefully he can pick up where he left off.
The Rockies will counter with Jason Hammel, who has been sharp as of late. He's 3-0 with a 0.31 ERA in his last 4 starts, and if that wasn't filthy enoughm he's 5-1 with a 2.80 ERA at home this year.
Reminder: the game is on at 8:40 PM EST tonight.
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