Roman Anthony Takes Jab at Red Sox Medical Staff

Anthony is expected to be evaluated on Thursday when the Red Sox have a day off to determine if he's going to be ready to return over the weekend against the New York Yankees. On Tuesday, Anthony said he doesn't have a flight booked to New York, but believes that a return on Friday is in play, per MassLive.com's Chris Cotillo.

Roman Anthony Opened Up

On top of that, Anthony opened up about his injury. In the process, he made it clear that he did everything that he could to return as fast as possible and even that pushing too hard too soon may have actually set him back. He also mentioned that he spoke to three outside doctors and all of them told him it would be a three-month injury, which it ended up being close to.

"I did everything I could,” Anthony said to Cotillo. “I thought I made that clear. I took all the (injections) I could, as soon as I could. I tried to do everything to get back on the field. Unfortunately, maybe we pushed too hard. Every time I tried to do that, it may have set me back a little bit. But at the same time, I saw three outside doctors that told me this was a three-month injury. After it all, it took right about that much.”

From Anthony's comments, the parts that stand out are the fact that he said that being pushed too hard could've set him back and that the three outside doctors all had similar timetables for the injury. Boston didn't broadcast a timeline like that publicly.

When Anthony initially went down, the messaging from the team was tricky, at best. Initially, there was hope that Anthony wouldn't even need a stint on the Injured List. Then, it was a whole thing whether Anthony was dealing with a sprain or some sort of torn ligament. Red Sox president and chief executive officer Sam Kennedy joined "The Greg Hill Show" on WEEI and specifically shut down the idea of Anthony dealing with a tear. Anthony followed up by confirming that he was dealing with a slight tear.

It was a saga. The injury that Anthony dealt with was a partially torn ring finger CMC ligament. It's not common, so naturally it wasn't a quick recovery.

The unfortunate thing, is that because there were conflicting rumors and reports out there, it put a big focus on the 22-year-old. There's nothing he could've done about the injury. It was a freak thing. Most of the messaging out there wasn't straight from him either. So, opinions were formed and fans weighed in — and in many cases flamed the young outfielder — for something out of his control. Then, odd rumors popped up about whether his time out around Boston at night led to the club sending him to Fort Myers to rehab, rather than near the team.

It was a wild — and unfortunate — time.

If anyone had said from the beginning that it would be a three-month injury, it would've minimized all of the conflicting information out there. Clearly, the messaging wasn't perfect.