Beckham Hurt; Is Tejada Available?

Well so much for Beckham’s luck... sorry about that Gordo.

Anyway, the Sox just announced that Gordon Beckham’s going to be out for the next six weeks with a fractured hamate bone. I assume (and it’s being reported) that Keppinger will slide over to second and then Gillaspie takes over at third.  

The good news first... Gillaspie should have no problem replacing Beckham’s offensive “production”.

The bad news? Well there are two obvious things and one wait and see.

1) Jeff Keppinger isn’t that good of a second baseman defensively.  Now, we’re not talking Miggy bad, but he’s a step down from Beckham, whose only redeeming factor is that he’s pretty good at second.  However, Keppinger probably can’t do too much damage with the glove in six weeks.

2) The hamate bone is in the wrist and wrist injuries are not so good for hitters.  They tend to linger and, as we saw last year with Konerko, don’t translate well in terms of production.  Beckham, who’s already a poor hitter, really can’t afford to be any worse. A lingering wrist injury might just cause that to happen.

The Sox will call up someone after the game tonight... and let’s hope it isn’t Brent Morel.  However, I’m not sure I want it to be Carlos Sanchez either.  Sanchez, probably the second best Sox prospect, only has 200 plate appearances above high A. Bringing him up to sit on the bench doesn’t make much sense.  So that means it probably will be Morel and well, even as someone who has never been a Morel fan, the last thing he needs is to sit on the bench.  (It’s also worth noting that Sanchez is NOT on the 40 man).

If Miguel Tejada is available... oh wait, he isn’t? Really? Tejada isn’t available? Wow. The Royals broke came with Tejada AND Francoeur? LOL. Okay, anyway, expect Morel to be called up.

So the impact? Not so great assuming that Morel doesn’t get many of Beckham’s at bats and Gillaspie isn’t Andy Gonzalez/Brent Morel. It hurts the Sox defense, but it’s really hard to say it’s that big of a deal considering it should only be about a 35-40 game injury.  What stinks is that Beckham’s luck might actually even out this year... but alas, we’ll have to wait until June to see if that’s true.  Bummer.