Red Sox provide update on Trevor Story injury

Word from doctors both inside and outside the organization has officially confirmed that the downright rotten luck for Red Sox shortstop Trevor Story will roll on through the 2024 season.

Injured in last weekend's series against the Angels, and with Story looking downright distraught when talking about the injury, the news on Story was almost always going to be a significant downer for the Red Sox.

And that official update came Tuesday, and courtesy of Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow.

"Yeah, so kind of a recent development here, he is in fact scheduled to have surgery after speaking with our medical staff further, and confirmation from a second opinion, and Trevor's decision to go forward," Breslow confirmed ahead of the team's home opener at Fenway Park. "He's got a fracture of the glenoid rim so he'll have surgery on Friday to fix that with Dr. ElAttrache."

The surgery will end Story's season, too, according to the team.

"What we're looking is somewhere in the neighborhood of six months [for a full recovery]," Breslow confirmed. "Difficult to speculate beyond that, but you can kind of do the math there."

More on the Red Sox

- Red Sox lose another pitcher to injured list

- Mazz: Remembering the 2004 Red Sox

- Red Sox hammer out extension with one of top prospects

Boston's newest update on Story continues what's been a downright disastrous, injury-marred tenure in town for the 31-year-old, who is slated to now miss over 300 games since signing a six-year, $140 million contract with the club in 2022.

Story's injury history with the Red Sox includes a hairline fracture in his wrist in 2022, and an elbow surgery recovery that caused him to miss the first four months of the 2023 campaign.

Overall, Story has hit .227 with 19 home runs and 84 RBIs in 145 games over three seasons with the Red Sox.

Results matter most, but the 2024 Red Sox do have their share of flaws.

Nonetheless, as the Red Sox return home from a season-opening 10-game road trip to Seattle, Oakland and Anaheim, they sport a 7-3 record that translates into a nifty .700 winning percentage, a figure that places them ahead of all but five teams in major league baseball. Will we take it? Of course. And pending free agent manager Alex Cora will celebrate that as much as anyone given what the Sox have deteriorated into over the last few seasons.

“It was a great road trip,” Cora told reporters yesterday after the Sox' 12-2 pounding of the (wannabe) Los Angeles Angels (of Anaheim). “Going into the season, we recognized how challenging it is to come to the West Coast right away. The organization did everything possible to put these guys in a situation where they were going to be fresh and ready to go. Credit to [the players]. They did an outstanding job.”

So there you go.

Tomorrow's home opener will be a reason to celebrate, after all.

Yah, Mazz, so what's the %$*&!@! problem? No problem - at least not yet. Let's just call them observations that have been pretty apparent and could become issues as time goes. The major league season, as we all know, is very, very long and will feature thousands of pitches, plays and situations. Nobody gets them all right. But there are always patterns and tendencies that bear watching, particularly with a roster that already has suffered some injuries (Trevor Story, Lucas Giolito, Vaughn Grissom) and was hardly awe-inspiring to begin with. So when we saw the Red Sox still have their share of flaws - and the mighty Los Angeles Dodgers do, too - that is merely a statement of fact and reality of life for each of the 30 major league teams.

But here are some things to keep an eye on:

Lament all you want about the simplistic nature of traditional metrics, but errors are still errors. The Red Sox have eight of them, which is tied for the fourth-most in baseball. More importantly, they have come at costly times. Wilyer Abreu had a sloppy outfield misplay in Seattle that was a key element in one of the Sox' three losses. Ditto for Rafael Devers' misplay with two outs in the sixth innings of the Sox' eventual 2-1 loss on Saturday night. (The Sox led 1-0 at the time.) While the Sox have allowed a major league low 24 runs thus far, a whopping nine of them (37.5 percent) have been unearned. (Ceddanne Rafaela, of all people, dropped a routine fly on Friday that helped lead to four of them.) Yes, the Sox are better afield. But if the A's and Angels were good teams, the Sox might have two more losses at least.

True fact: As of this morning, newcomer Tyler O'Neill leads the majors - yes, the majors - in OPS, one place ahead of Mookie Betts. (Who needs him, anyway?) The problem is that the Red Sox still look vulnerable against left-handed pitching, the most obvious example being Saturday's 2-1 loss to lefty Reid Detmers and the Angels. Of the Sox' 13 home runs this season, only one has come against a left-handed pitcher. (Interestingly, the left-handed-hitting Reese McGuire provided it yesterday.) Obviously, it's early. But with Trevor Story (a career .299 hitter against lefties) now out, too, the Sox lean even more heavily to the left.

If you've watched any Sox game this season, you're likely to have seen a lot of strikeouts. From the pitching perspective, this has been a pleasant surprising. From the hitting perspective, it's starting to get worrisome. Red Sox batters right now have the third-most strikeouts in baseball, which obviously flies in the face of Alex Cora's mantra to put the ball in play. Triston Casas leads the Sox with 12 strikeouts, but there are low-contact hitters splattered throughout the Sox lineup. (Jarren Duran is batting .349 but has 11 strikeouts.) With a man on third and less than two outs - when contact is critical - the Sox are 2-for-20 with eight strikeouts. That won't hurt too much against teams like the A's and Angels. It will when the opponents are better.

Click here for 98.5 The Sports Hub's complete coverage of the Red Sox.