Red Sox designate Mike Cameron for assignment

Red Sox designate Mike Cameron for assignment

By John Tomase
Thursday, June 30, 2011 - Updated 5 hours ago
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The Red Sox [team stats] have designated veteran outfielder Mike Cameron for assignment, ending his injury-plagued tenure with the team after just one and a half seasons.

The Red Sox were forced to act this morning after an injury to third baseman Kevin Youkilis [stats] left them a little short in the infield. Yamaico Navarro was summoned from Triple-A Pawtucket to replace Cameron on the roster.

In truth, Cameron’s days were already numbered. On the team because of his ability to hit left-handers, Cameron was batting just .149 overall and .143 vs. lefties when the Red Sox decided to pull the plug. They have 10 days to trade or release the 38-year-old veteran of 17 big league seasons, and GM Theo Epstein said there remained a very tiny chance that Cameron would accept an assignment to Pawtucket, though he characterized that as a long shot.



“It’s not a move we were looking to make necessarily,” Epstein said in the back of the Citizens Bank Park press box moments ago. “We were trying to buy as much time as we could, trying to strike the right balance to let guys get untracked a little bit. Mike’s obviously got a great track record. Even last year, I mean, he was hurt, and he still raked left-handed pitching.

“I think the expectation coming into the year is that he would help us against lefties, and it ended up just being a tough adjustment for him to a role he wasn’t that familiar with. So we were trying to strike the balance between giving him enough time to get untracked and then also realizing that it’s an area of the club that we might need to try something new to give us a little bit more of a threat against left-handed pitching.”

Epstein said the club will pursue trade talks for Cameron over the next week and a half, but noted that if they could have traded him already, they would have.

Epstein also accepted blame for the fact that signing Cameron to a two-year, $15.5 million deal two years ago didn’t work out. He said the team had trepidation about signing an outfielder as old as Cameron in free agency, but ultimately felt good about the decision because he took such good care of himself and was coming off a productive season in Milwaukee.

Then Cameron suffered a serious abdominal injury last spring and never recovered. He underwent what Epstein described as double-hernia, double-groin surgery in the offseason, but never found his rhythm this year.

“We recognized that (the signing) was a risk,” Epstein said. “Given some of the other things going on it made sense at the time. But when it doesn’t work out you have to stand up and say, ‘It didn’t work out.’ We’re not going to sugarcoat it. That one didn’t work out. I still think very highly of Mike as a player and a person. He got hurt and ended up not producing this year. It didn’t end up working out for the Red Sox, despite his best efforts.”


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