The Sox played Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Varitek a

Maybe this is all you need to know about spring training: On the team's last day in Florida, Red Sox manager Terry Francona was asked if there was a player he was particularly impressed by,

and he skipped past the usual suspects and rhapsodized about the local hero, Nate Spears.Great kid, by all accounts, the kind you hope one day makes it, but hardly a barometer of what kind of club is breaking camp three days ahead of the regular season. Boston Red Sox Jerseys The lesson in that? If the manager isn't caught up in how his regulars look in camp, then maybe you shouldn't be, either. The Sox played Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Varitek almost equally this spring, which could portend how they will be used in the regular season. Francona said he expected Varitek would play more than the typical backup. No one has publicly voiced that it could be a 50-50 split, but Varitek has said he's not sure how much he'll play. It probably all depends on Saltalamacchia. If he begins to fulfill his great promise,Cheap MLB Chicago Cubs Jerseys, the full-time job is there for the taking. For what it's worth, Saltalamacchia hit .364 with a home run and six doubles this spring.
"Nate Spears had a great camp, there's no getting around it," Francona said. "Fun to watch, worked hard, I think he grew on everybody. Every single coach was like, 'Damn, this guy can play."' There's also no getting around that Spears, who was born here and grew up in Port Charlotte, is a soon-to-be 26-year-old who has spent eight seasons in the minor leagues and last season took a step backward, going from Triple-A in the Cubs' system to Double-A Portland for the Sox."It really doesn't matter," Francona said. "You can hit .500 in the spring, but when the season starts you can't bottle it. You just do the best you can to be ready. Somebody's going to get real hot for us, somebody's going to get real cold, that's just the way it goes." Especially for a club that lost 1,018 games to the disabled list last season, spread among 19 players and 24 stints. MLB Jerseys All the guys who could have been guest stars on "Grey's Anatomy" last summer appear fully recovered from their various surgical procedures, including new first baseman Adrian Gonzalez, who didn't play in his first game until March 12 but capped his spring with a long home run to left-center Tuesday off the Rays' Wade Davis.
Jacoby Ellsbury played with his usual abandon. John Lackey obviously spent time with the Slenderizer. Daisuke Matsuzaka was as fit as he has been in three years: no shoulder or neck or hamstring miseries. The screw in Dustin Pedroia's foot will draw notice only when he passes through airport security. Mike Cameron and Jason Varitek both made liars of the calendar.The only real health issue of consequence was the sore left elbow of promising lefty Felix Doubront, and he saw his first game action Tuesday, pitching two scoreless innings in a minor league game."The season starts in a couple of days," Francona said, "and you just don't know who's going to come out swinging well and who won't. It's the same way every year. But I mean our guys, Youk wanted extra at-bats, Crawford wanted extra at-bats, they got 'em. There's not a lot of pushing to go around here, to get guys to do stuff. They want to come out feeling good about themselves."