Limping Pinstripes

While the Red Sox are pondering what to do without David Ortiz for the first couple weeks of the season, the Yankees are having a similar problem - though multiplied in severity. We already knew that Alex Rodriguez was going to be out for at least half the season recovering from hip surgery, but his absence is just the tip of the iceberg.

Mark Teixeira is out at least until mid-May with a strained tendon in his right wrist, and he's lucky to be avoiding surgery. Curtis Granderson fractured his arm on February 24th when he was hit by a pitch, and will also be out more than a month.

Luckily for the Yankees, CC Sabathia has seemingly recovered from his offseason surgery, and is scheduled to return this Friday. Meanwhile, it's only due to Ichiro Suzuki's unique brand of badassery that he emerged from a car accident unscathed last week.

The Yankees are getting desperate as some of their most talented (and well-compensated) veterans succumb to freak accidents and the ravages of aging, apparently asking Chipper Jones to come out of retirement to shore up the roster (he declined). Kevin Millar, unable to resist a joke, had this to say:

But even GM Brian Cashman isn't content with contributing to the team by signing players. No, he felt the need to show his solidarity with his battered troops by earning a fracture of his own - while skydiving, of all things.

So while it's certainly a huge bummer to be missing David Ortiz for a little while, we can take comfort in the fact that things could always be worse - and that they're finally worse for the Yankees.

Aceves back in camp

In case (by some miracle) you haven't seen this yet, I give you the video of the brawl that took place between the Mexico and Canada World Baseball Classic teams. As far as baseball brawls go, this one is actually pretty intense - less standing around and puffing up of chests and more actual contact than I'm used to seeing. Who knew Canadians harbored that much aggression?

In totally unsurprising news, Red Sox pitcher Alfredo Aceves was mixing it up with Canada's Tyson Gillies, a player he'd never met:

"What can I say? It didn't surprise me. He threw me to the floor. I stood up and I reacted, too," Aceves said. "I didn't do nothing to him. I was just calming [others] down. The fighting was with the pitcher and the hitter. I was saying, 'Calm down, man. Calm down. Come on. Calm down.' He just grabbed me and threw me on the floor. I was like, 'I want to throw you on the floor.' Then when I jumped in to this guy, I got seven guys against me.  You’re locked in. You’re just trying to defend and knock them out. That’s it. We were trying to [defend] ourselves. We didn’t do nothing to him. He just threw me," he said.

Mexico has been eliminated from the WBC, and Aceves is back in camp, relatively unharmed and ready to pitch. Given Aceves' history of surliness and griping about his role, it will be interesting to see how things pan out in camp: though he has always wanted a spot in the rotation, there's simply no room. He'll probably end up in the bullpen, in a much less glamorous spot than last year, and hopefully he'll handle that with some maturity.

David Ortiz is irreplaceable

The Boston.com Red Sox page is currently running the headline, "How could the Red Sox replace David Ortiz?" As I'm sure you all know, Big Papi will be sidelined for at least five days with inflammation in both heels, meaning he is unlikely to be ready for Opening Day.

So how DO the Red Sox replace Ortiz? Boston.com has a few suggestions, ranging from Mike Napoli (with Lyle Overbay at first) to Juan Carlos Linares. But the answer is much more simple than any of that: you absolutely cannot replace David Ortiz, not in the lineup, and not in the clubhouse, and not in the hearts of Red Sox Nation.

We've long known this day was coming, and now we're getting a (hopefully) short glimpse of what life will be life after Ortiz - uncertain, unnerving, unpleasant. Papi has been a Red Sox stalwart for a decade  now, coming through in the most stressful games, and providing a constant smile in the clubhouse.

Ortiz has hit 343 homeruns while in Boston, and, perhaps more impressively, has legged out thirteen triples in that time (last season was the only triple-less year for Ortiz in his Red Sox career). On average Ortiz has hit .290 each season, with a .389 OBP and 34 homeruns - you can't replace that kind of production at this stage, and you can't replace one of the leaders in the clubhouse.

Though the team will try to brush this off like no big deal, the loss of Ortiz for even the first week of the season is huge, and if this is a sign of things to come for the big lefty, the Sox could be in serious trouble this year.