clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

Red Sox prospect Rubby De La Rosa scratched from start

De La Rosa has a minor injury, and will miss his scheduled start on Tuesday.

By Marc Normandin
J. Meric

Rubby De La Rosa was slated to start today for the Pawtucket Red Sox against Indianapolis, but instead, he'll be held out for precautionary reasons. De La Rosa "tweaked" a muscle in his side, according to the PawSox Twitter feed, and the Red Sox obviously don't want to push the issue with their young hurler, who has already seen his development time cut into thanks to Tommy John surgery and subsequent recovery.

It doesn't sound like a serious injury, and given they're going to give him time to rest rather than push him to start today, they can likely keep it from becoming anything more than a tweak. That's good news for De La Rosa and the Sox, as he was just starting to lengthen his outings as he worked back towards a typical starter's workload, in the hopes of having him ready as starting pitching depth for Boston by the summer. This might throw that schedule off slightly, but so long as nothing else comes of this muscle tweak, he shouldn't be off-target by much, if at all.

Read More: PawSox update: Jackie Bradley Jr., Rubby De La Rosa, Bryce Brentz

De La Rosa had just been coming around statistically, with his ERA dropping to 3.65 thanks to shutting out opponents completely since his final appearance of April, four starts ago.

Lefty Chris Hernandez will start in De La Rosa's place against Andy Oliver. Hernandez last started on April 26, but has been in a bullpen role since then. He's still throwing plenty of innings, though, as he's made appearances on May , 6, 11, and 16, and accumulated 16 frames in that stretch. He's also bumped his strikeout-to-walk ratio to an even two, and is inducing grounders at his pre-Pawtucket rates as well.

*****

Update 12:36 pm: Alex Speier reports, more specifically, that the "tweak" in Rubby De La Rosa's side was an intercostal strain, and that the right-hander is already feeling a bit better the day after.

Read more Red Sox:

More From Over the Monster