Friday, March 20, 2009

Youk Won't Blame the WBC

Kevin Youkilis isn't pointing fingers at the World Baseball Classic for the achilles/ankle injury that ended his time with the USA. And it doesn't appear that the celebration he was in had anything to do with knocking him out of the tournament. (BTW, the US will play Japan in the semifinals on Sunday night in Los Angeles.)

He's a had a concern with his foot for many years, and it's been a problem since spring training started. But he did absolve the WBC for any blame for the injury:

"I've been hearing that this [injury] is the WBC's fault, this is a stupid idea. It's not. It's a great thing. We had fun. It was a blast. It was an honor to represent your country."

Here's more from the Boston Globe.

No timetable has been set up for Youk's return, but it still doesn't look like anything that will keep him out for any significant time. And Dustin Pedroia returns today to the Red Sox lineup against the Pirates.

The Red Sox last night rudely treated old friend Bronson Arroyo, as Jed Lowrie and Chris Carter both blasted two-run homers to lead the Sox to a 9-1 win over the Cincinnati Reds in Sarasota. Jon Lester pitched 4 1/3 solid innings, allowing just a first inning run before settling in.

I was watching the game on the MLB Network last night and had the Reds feed. They talked about the Reds moving to Arizona next season for spring training. And then both Florida and Arizona will have 15 teams playing spring baseball. (It doesn't seem that long ago that Florida had twice the number teams training there than in Arizona.) I guess someone will have to move from one state to the other to keep the number of teams in both states even.

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