The Red Sox have one more reason to feel a little better about Willson Contreras, even if there’s still no real timetable for when he’ll be back.
Contreras is dealing with the aftermath of a pitch to the left hand in Thursday night’s game against the Texas Rangers, and the main question hanging over Boston has been whether the damage includes a fracture. On Saturday, there was at least a small step in the right direction.
Red Sox insider Ian Browne of MLB.com reported that Contreras was moving better a day after the injury.
"Willson Contreras has more range of motion when he squeezes his hand today than he did yesterday," wrote Browne. "It remains a day to day monitoring for improvement.
He is fairly confident it isn't fractured. He will do everything he can to play through this once symptoms allow."
That doesn’t settle anything, but it does offer some encouragement after the hit-by-pitch in the eighth inning on Thursday.
The concern matters because Contreras has been carrying the offense. He homered Tuesday in the opener against Texas, pushing his season total to a career-high 27 even though he missed two weeks on the injured list at the start of the month. He has been Boston’s best hitter by a wide margin and ranks third among the team’s position players with 4.6 bWAR.
For the Red Sox, the best-case outcome would be getting Contreras back in time for a possible Yankees series in the Bronx, and ideally having a game or two left in the regular season to get him loose before that. That’s the hope. The reality is still that Boston is waiting, and at this stage of the season, waiting is what makes everyone uneasy.
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