Red Sox catcher Christian Vázquez suffers eye injury, not expected to miss Opening Day

Red Sox catcher Christian Vázquez suffered a contusion and laceration under his left eye before Thursday’s spring training game against the Twins, but it’s not expected to keep him out for significant time.

The injury occurred when the Red Sox were going through pitchers’ fielding practice drills before the game, and Vázquez caught a thrown ball to the face. He was expected to play in Thursday’s game but was a late scratch due to the incident.

Manager Alex Cora said he hasn’t seen Vázquez but said that he’ll go through tests this weekend, and he sounded encouraged that he’ll return soon.

“We feel like he should be OK,” Cora said. “Obviously, it was kind of scary, obviously. He’s got to go through some tests, probably Saturday. But we’re confident that he’ll be OK for next week. …

“There was a ball thrown. I don’t know if he was looking somewhere … I was actually looking at the play and all of a sudden I saw him down. There was a throw made, it hit him, he had these big glasses, it hit him in the glasses and got him in the left cheek there. It was one of those drills, we were doing PFPs with runners and all that. It was just a freak accident.”

Martin Perez, Thursday’s starting pitcher, had to make a late adjustment when Vázquez was scratched, but echoed his manager’s comments that he should be fine.

“He’s OK,” Perez said. “I think he’s going to be ready for the Opening Day. But that happens. That’s baseball. You don’t want to look or see that kind of thing, but sometimes that happens.”

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3coHs97