Koji Uehara

After four years with the Boston Red Sox, veteran reliever Koji Uehara has reportedly found a new home with the Chicago Cubs. 

Boston Red Sox relief pitcher Koji Uehara suffered an apparent pectoral injury Tuesday night during the club's game against the San Francisco Giants. 

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Boston Red Sox pitcher Koji Uehara will be on the disabled list for the remainder of the 2015 season with a fractured right wrist.

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Spring training declarations are a difficult beast to tackle. Putting too much weight in March statistics would be misguided, as Jake Fox and his 10 Grapefruit League home runs in 2011 remind us. "Jake Who?" you ask? Precisely. 

At the same time, this is the first extended look at the 30 MLB clubs, and in some cases managers are determining roster spots based on performance. So these games aren't entirely meaningless; they just have to be viewed through the proper lens. 

Let's preface this by stating the obvious: It's really early. This isn't going to be a piece making outlandish declarations from a handful of spring training games. Instead, we'll simply look at which Boston Red Sox players are making notable impressions in the early stages of baseball's return. 

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The July 31 MLB trade deadline is less than two weeks away.

The Boston Red Sox have had a very disappointing 2014 season.

With Major League Baseball's 8-team and now 10-team playoff format, it's actually become somewhat rare to see teams with the best regular season records reach the World Series. Fans of the 97-win St. Louis Cardinals and Boston Red Sox certainly aren't complaining.

Chances are 38-year-old middle relievers don't usually become stars overnight, but due to injuries in the Boston Red Sox bullpen, Koji Uehara had the opportunity to become one this summer. After months of dominance, Boston and its new closer head to October as a candidate to reach the World Series. 

Smiles and high-fives have become commonplace around Fenway Park these days, but nobody has grinned wider and slapped hands more enthusiastically than the guy most often on the mound at game's end.