Injuries Leave Red Sox in Trouble

Let it be said that the 1989 Boston Red Sox have heart.

It was not always a given in the past. Words such as character rightfully would have been wasted if connected to Boston teams waging pennant battles in other years.

Not so this season. The Red Sox have heart. How could you not when you have one pitcher making almost every start despite a torn muscle in his elbow, when you have another pitcher trying to get over a little thing like potentially life-threatening blood clots in order to come back for the stretch drive? Or when you have overachievers such as Randy Kutcher, Danny Heep and Luis Rivera playing more than well enough to tide over a team when guys like Ellis Burks, Dwight Evans and Marty Barrett nurse their wounds.

Unfortunately for the Red Sox, they also have had enough key injuries and pitfalls to make it rather remarkable they are still in a race. Those setbacks also have made it increasingly hard to believe the Red Sox can overcome.

Granted, the Red Sox still have every right to believe it can catch both the Baltimore Orioles and Toronto Blue Jays in the 29 games left. But that grip on division-title hopes grows more tenuous by the day.

Boston needed a 10th straight victory Wednesday to remain within four games of first-place Baltimore, which won in Cleveland. Boston did not get that victory, losing to a stronger, deeper, healthier California Angels club, 4-0.

“You can’t worry about things like that,” Red Sox Manager Joe Morgan said of the lost opportunity to stay within four, of the fact Boston needed nine victories in 10 games to gain all of 1 1/2 games in the standings.

Morgan has more pressing problems, such as whether he’ll get a starting rotation strong enough to overcome. His next starter up is Roger Clemens, who gamely goes on despite that muscle tear. All Clemens has to do Thursday night is outpitch Kirk McCaskill, 14-7 with a 2.78 ERA and Cy Young aspirations.

Then comes Mike Smithson (7-12). The only reason Smithson will go against the Seattle Mariners on Friday is because he was so rested after his start against California on Tuesday. After all, Smithson only lasted two innings.

After that, Mike Boddicker, a 12-game winner and second-half godsend, gets the nod. Then it’s back to finger-crossing time. Oil Can Boyd, making a most improbable comeback from those blood clots, will start Sunday, his first appearance since May 1. The Red Sox aren’t hoping for anything as outrageous as a complete game, or even six or seven innings. They’re just hoping Boyd stays healthy and will gladly go from there.

“Oil Can can give us a boost -- if he can pitch well,” Morgan said.

The Red Sox desperately need that because if the playoffs started today and Boston was in them, Morgan would have to do a great deal of soul-searching just to figure out who would be a worthy No. 3 starter.

Wes Gardner, smashed by a baseball and nursing three cracked bones in his face, is gone. Eric Hetzel is nursing a strained muscle in his forearm. John Dopson? His start Wednesday was the first since Aug. 1, when a strained elbow caused him to be disabled.

It’s no wonder that, even before the winning streak ended, Morgan had a wish list.

“We really have to have four good starters to give us quality starts every day,” he said. “We had it once, but we lost Hetzel and Dopson.”

So Dopson was a welcome return. Still he lost. He wasn’t bad, mind you, allowing three earned runs in six innings. And he did give Boston innings, needed considering the bullpen is in dire straits, too.

“Greg Harris was really all we had,” Morgan said. “If that game had gone long, who knows what would have happened. The best point of the night was Dopson going as long as he did.”

Trouble is, Dopson was only decent while Abbott was good.

Abbott threw a four-hit shutout against a team that scored 21 runs in a doubleheader sweep the night before and 62 runs in its nine-game winning streak.

His performance offered a contrast to Dopson’s that is pretty much emblematic of Boston’s chronic shortfall.

With Abbott’s victory, Angels starters are 62-40. They have 27 complete games, 11 shutouts and an ERA under 3.35. Boston’s starters are 45-48 with an ERA over 4.30. Their complete games number only nine, their shutouts six.

And depth? It’s only as deep and as good as Roger Clemens and Mike Boddicker can take it every fifth day. They are the only Red Sox pitchers in double figures in victories. Abbott, an 11-game winner, is one of four on Doug Rader’s staff. That’s how many starters Rader can call on to stop short losing streaks before they mushroom into big ones. That’s just what Abbott did Wednesday, stopped the losing at two games. What Dopson could not do was keep Boston on a streak it desperately needed to keep going.

“We certainly have confidence in all of our people,” Manager Rader said. “It’s nice to have the feeling that any one of them can go out and do the job for you. You have that trust in them. It won’t necessarily be spectacular, but good enough to get the job done on a daily basis.”

Morgan cannot say the same.

Therein lies the difference.