MVN - Most Valuable Network

Crawford's a little sore these days--Michael Black

Crawford Visits Dr. Andrews; Gets MRI on Knee/Hamstring

Carl Crawford was not in the Rays starting lineup for a second straight game. CC didn’t start Sunday’s game, but was a defensive replacement for Jonny Gomes. He spent his off day in Birmingham, AL getting checked out by Rays Medical Director and best known sports surgeon, Dr. James Andrews.

Good news for the Rays is the knee and hamstring MRI’s came back negative and Crawford is with the team in Boston. He is available tonight if needed. Eric Hinske will shift to LF with Gabe Gross starting in RF.  The Rays will be cautious in how they use Crawford. According to Joe Maddon this was something that has “just been building up” and could explain for Carl’s recently lack of aggression on the bases.  Here are some quotes from Raysbaseball.com

“He had a little bit of soreness in the lower [hamstring], knee area,” Rays manager Joe Maddon said. “So we had an MRI done. We couldn’t send him to [team orthopedic] Dr. [Koco] Eaton, because he was in Paris, so it was much more difficult for him to see him, so we sent him to Dr. Andrews in Birmingham instead. They pretty much looked at him … [and] gave him clearance to play. He’s ready to go. [We’re] just waiting for him to report and he’ll be available later for tonight’s game.”

“But again, we had it all checked out and everything seems to be OK,” Maddon said

“And the way he runs, he runs so hard, and he’s been diving all over the place,” Maddon said. “It just became abnormally sore and Carl’s not the kind of guy that complains about stuff. So we just wanted to get a benchmark with him, and we did.”

Hopefully it is what it is just soreness and a few days away from the Tropicana turf will help CC get his legs under him, literally.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008 at 6:25 pm and is filed under MVN Rays. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.