Sox Drawer: Sox limp back to Fenway without Papi & Dice K

A 4-6 road trips ends with a depressing defeat and the team trudging home to take on the 1st place Rays without two of its top players.

To all the fans of clubs that are wallowing in mediocrity and blaming a rash of injuries for their team's current crummy state, I only have one thing to say:

STFU!

With yesterday's revelation that David Ortiz, arguably the possessor of most lethal bat in the lineup as well as being the unequivocal leader in the clubhouse, will miss at least a month but most likely more due to a freak wrist injury, Boston has now lost six key players from the roster at some point this season.

A quick recap of the current and past walking wounded:

-SP Daisuke Matsuzaka: currently on the DL due to a shoulder problem; able to return next Wednesday, June 11th, but status uncertain

-SP Josh Beckett: missed the first two weeks of the season with a back injury

-SP Clay Buchholz: just reactivated from the DL due to a cracked fingernail; currently refining his game at Pawtucket

-3B Mike Lowell: missed 17 games in April with a sprained thumb

-1B Sean Casey: key reserve missed 12 games in late April/early May with a hip strain

-DH David Ortiz: out indefinitely with a torn tendon sheath in his left wrist

I don't know about you but that's an awful lot of offensive and pitching firepower to have go down in just over 1/3rd of a season.

Yet here the Sox are, just a game and a half out of first place with the fourth best record in the majors despite the plethora of ailments, and no one is whining and complaining that the losses have robbed the team of any chance of being competitive this year.

Why?

Because thanks to a terrific farm system and shrewd off season deals by Theo this team has more depth than an Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu film, which has allowed the boo birds to remain at bay while Tito plugs holes and fills gaps in the roster, biding time until the day the team is at full strength again.

That's not to say it hasn't been tough to juggle lineups and shuffle players up and down from Pawtucket on what seems like a weekly basis. But the depth does allow the backup players and minor leaguers get a chance to prove their worth, and for the most part almost every single fill-in has performed at or above expectations.

Take Justin Masterson for example. The kid who began the season at Double A Portland will make his third spot start tonight in place of Dice-K, and his excellent efforts in his two prior starts (5H, 2ER in 12.1 IP) have earned him a promotion to the Pawsox and put him on a fast track to become next year's Jon Lester or Buchholz.

Brandon Moss hit a homer in the first game of the year, went back to the minors the next day, came back up when Casey went down, hit another homer in a game against Tampa Bay in early May, had an emergency appendectomy the next night, and was just named the IL Player of the Week for last week when he hit .400 with four homers.

He's now a leading candidate to take Papi's spot on the roster.

Now that's what I call depth.

Of course no one, especially a rookie with 21 career major league games under his belt, is going to be able to replace one of the greatest clutch hitters of all time, but the fact is this team is built to withstand temporary losses to the lineup without sinking into the depths of the cellar of the division like some other clubs we know and hate.

Yup, I'm talking about you, New York.

Hopefully they can just keep plugging holes and plugging along, and if and when this team does get back to full strength, there will be no stopping them from capturing title #3 of the new millennium.