Third baseman Pablo Sandoval was expected to bring his winning ways to the Boston Red Sox this season after prevailing in three World Series with the San Francisco Giants, but the Kung Fu Panda is on the mend with a quad injury suffered against the Toronto Blue Jays on June 13, per Shi Davidi of Sportsnet.
Continue for updates.
Sandoval Injured vs. Blue Jays
Saturday, June 13
Tim Britton of the Providence Journal reported that Jeff Bianchi replaced the injured Sandoval at third base.
The 28-year-old from Venezuela is a two-time All-Star selection and a former World Series MVP, so he has essentially done it all at the MLB level. Signing with Boston seemed like an attempt to pursue a new challenge, but there have certainly been some bumps along the way.
Many figured that Sandoval could miss a significant amount of time when he was drilled in the knee by Texas Rangers reliever Sam Freeman on May 19. It looked bad at the time, as he went down in a heap, but he was back in the lineup by May 21.
While Sandoval was crushing right-handed pitching, he decided to experiment with abandoning switch-hitting against lefties late in May due to how poorly he fared against southpaws over the course of the season, per Jared Carrabis of Barstool Sports:
Sandoval entered the year as a three-time .300 hitter and had only one season to his credit in which he hit worse than .278. That meant there were pretty big expectations hanging over his head, and it is possible that they got to him to some degree.
Rather than his form against left-handed pitchers, though, the main concern regarding Sandoval at this point is his health.
That has been an issue at points over the course of his career, as he played in only 225 of a possible 324 games in his All-Star seasons of 2011 and 2012, although he has largely been pretty durable.
His durability was on full display when he bounced back from getting hit on the knee, and the Red Sox need that to be the case once again or else they will be without one of their best hitters for a crucial stretch.
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