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By BRENDAN MCGAIR Sports writer PAWTUCKET – The catch word amongst the Red Sox and their affiliates these days is oblique.
Easy to pronounce. Tough to get an accurate read on.
Starting at the top with Mike Lowell and filtering down to Pawtucket, where sluggers Jonathan Van Every and Chris Carter have been feeling the pinch of what’s commonly referred to as a pulled ribcage muscle, oblique injuries have become “a pain in the side” for the players and the training staff. While an oblique strain is not considered a serious setback, it can snowball into something severe if not properly treated.
The general consensus is that an off-balanced swing produces the twinge, followed soon by cramping and shortness of breath.
“I wasn’t sure what it was, but it was a unique feeling,” said Carter, who’s been on the disabled list since August 9. “I know a lot of baseball players have had the injury, but I never thought I would have it.”
A newcomer to the PawSox this week, Jason Lane fought his way through an oblique strain earlier this summer while with Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. While Lane agrees that the end result occurs when a hitter takes a cut, there could be a chain of events leading up to the final result.
“In my case, it could have been due to coming back from the All-Star break. We had a long travel day and was maybe a little run down,” said Lane, who was shelved for nearly three weeks. “An awkward swing helped clear everything up.”
“Things prior to (the oblique) come into play, as far as training and working out,” noted Pawtucket strength and conditioning coach Carl Kochan. “You’ve got a lot of little things to worry about, but they are athletes. They are resilient and come back quick.”
“I tried to play through it,” Lane said, “but it’s a tough injury to treat.”
Lane brings up a good point. The oblique injury can be a tricky thing to diagnose accurately. That said, most are in agreement that the best medicine is rest.
Carter remembers going to team trainer Greg Barajas and Kochan, informing the pair he felt fine a few days after the initial pain had subsided. Barajas replied that it would be in his best interest to shut things down.
“(Barajas) told me ‘Hey, you really need to rest.’ That was after informing me how easy it is to get hurt again,” said Carter. “He said that you need to make sure you’re 100 percent when you come back.”
“The athlete has to communicate with (the trainers) how good or bad it is on a particular day,” said Kochan. “The degree and severity of the injury comes into play, but everyone is different.”
This was Lane’s first go-around with an oblique injury, which can fall under a wide range of recovery times. “It took me two-and-a-half weeks before I felt good to go,” said the outfielder/first baseman.
There are several areas the training staff inspects before providing the green light for baseball-related activities. “You want to make sure the spine is stable and the hip complex is working the way it needs to,” said Kochan. “Then you go back to the baby steps of training.”
In Carter’s case, that meant performing something with little stress attached (i.e. playing catch). The 25-year-old all-star has progressed up to tee work with the hopes of taking some cuts in the cage sometime over the weekend in Rochester.
In addition, “there’s a lot of abdominal work,” said Lane. “You want to stay flexible.”
Van Every never officially landed on the disabled list, though he did miss 11 straight games before returning to the lineup this past Tuesday. That same night Van Every, who is currently tied with Carter for fourth in the league in homers (24), developed a stiff neck.
“The neck has nothing to do with the oblique, which is a good sign,” said Pawtucket manager Ron Johnson when asked to provide a status update about Van Every.
As to whether it’s merely happenstance the Red Sox are being bit hard by oblique setbacks, Kochan said, “I just think it’s one of things that’s a coincidence. We had one guy in Boston (Lowell) go down with it. Of course, a day or two prior (Van Every and Carter) go down. I just think it’s a bad coincidence.”
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