There is no doubt about it, the Red Sox would not have reached the playoffs if it wasn't for Jed Lowrie. Lowrie stepped up when Julio Lugo went down with his quad injury and when I say 'stepped up,' I mean it. It took him a few weeks to accumulate more RBIs than Julio Lugo had gotten in 4 months. He also managed to play astounding defense at short. Red Sox fans couldn't have been more pleased with the results. Then Lowrie started struggling and his numbers slipped dramatically (.213 AVG in September including an 8-51 slump to end the season.) Most people, myself included, figured that the scouting reports were out and Lowrie just needed to adapt to the pitchers. Come to find out, that wasn't really the case. Mr. Lowrie had been playing with a left wrist fracture for the past month or so. According to Theo Epstein, the fracture has already started healing and Jed should be perfectly healthy for 2009.