Red Sox seemingly bailing on Roman Anthony recovery plan raises further questions

The plan for Roman Anthony after he hit the Injured List in early May should've been to let the 22-year-old fully heal before he returned to game action for the Boston Red Sox. But ever since Anthony's fateful hand injury on May 4, the entire situation's been soiled with miscommunication, confusion, and mixed signaling.

There was Anthony himself in late May contradicting earlier reports about the severity of the hand injury. There was a series of stop-and-go, "Is he close to coming back or not?" narratives floating around for weeks.

Now we know that he never was close. In fact, Anthony apparently never got fully healthy before the Red Sox decided to reactivate him on August 30. As such, Anthony's re-aggravation of his hand in the AL Wild Card Series now becomes a stain on Boston's medical team and the club's management of Anthony overall.

It looks like the Red Sox brought Roman Anthony back way too soon

Boston Globe reporter Tim Healey, speaking on Foul Territory this week, emphasized that Anthony was never entirely healed, and that his hand is going to need a "hard reset" this offseason.

Leading up to the August 30 activation, Anthony's rehab stint in Fort Myers was naturally the subject of great curiosity. Every "update" in his "progression" was overanalyzed and, knowing what we know now, idealized. Reports of pain-free swings in July got fans excited, but those reports were closer to propaganda than anything else. Anthony refuted those reports on Wednesday by saying his hand was never really 100%. But wasn't he ... supposed to stay on the shelf until the pain fully dissipated? Apparently, that was neglected.

This all may've been a case of the Red Sox feeding the fanbase false information about Anthony's true health status. Or perhaps Boston's leadership itself was wearing rose-tinted glasses and had convinced itself that Anthony was ready to go when he was not. Worse still, the Red Sox may have decided to throw Anthony into the fire knowing fully well that he was still injured. Whatever happened, it was a mistake, as it led to new problems in Anthony's hand ... among other issues.

Red Sox's Roman Anthony mismanagement isn't just about a physical injury

By botching this situation with Anthony, the Red Sox are harming Anthony and themselves in more ways than just the hand. Everyone's reputation takes a beating from this, and it all could have been avoided by just announcing back in August that he was done for the foreseeable future. There would've been backlash then, but in the end, the general fanbase doesn't normally persevere with any months-long argument against the advice of modern medicine.

With how this was handled, and with all of the misinformation swirling, Anthony was exposed to attacks of being labeled "soft" (Red Sox writers are actually wondering about this), and the Red Sox's medical team looks wholly unorganized and possibly reckless. It's a classic case of adding insult to injury, but much of that insult was self-inflicted by Boston.

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