Xander Bogaerts leaves Sunday’s game with apparent injury

Sunday’s game against the Rays has not been going well, but that was bound to happen eventually. The team wasn’t going to go 161-1, ya know? (Edit: Maybe they are?) The Red Sox could handle a loss, even one with some frustrating moments like this particular game. What they cannot handle, or at least don’t want to have to handle, is losing a player to injury during this kind of loss. It’s unclear how big of a concern this is at the moment, but Boston is holding their breath for now after Xander Bogaerts exited Sunday’s game in the seventh inning with an apparent ankle injury.

The injury occurred on a strange play that started with some bad defense by J.D. Martinez. Rays infield Joey Wendle hit a ball off the Monster that was misplayed by the Red Sox left fielder. Martinez was right up against the wall and it bounced off him towards the infield, and he came up and made a bad throw to Bogaerts. The Red Sox shortstop then tried to flip the ball to third but no one was there. At this point, Bogaerts slid down onto the steps of said dugout to prevent the ball from leaving play and allowing a run to score. The Red Sox would have preferred the run, I’m sure.

For what it’s worth, it didn’t really look too bad at first. In fact, it wasn’t even clear (to me, at least) at first that Bogaerts was feeling any pain. However, the Red Sox trainers came out and looked at him, and specifically his ankle. Things seemed to get progressively worse, and he eventually came off the field with a limp before being helped down the stairs to the Red Sox clubhouse. Hopefully, this is just some quick pain and this isn’t anything serious, but we’ll have to wait for official word from the team. We’ll keep you updated on any new developments.