Anxious Nicodamus Says: Anderson Should Not Start Today

Thankfully, most of what I predict turns out to be wrong, and I'm counting on this morning's premonitions to be based in anxiety rather than prescience. But here's what we know:

- Brett Anderson sprained his right ankle in his last start, landing funny on it following an ordinary pitch.

- Anderson has been known, going back to last season, to collapse and fall down following the most ordinary of pitches.

- The mound a Fenway Park is currently a mess. Despite generous portions, and refills, of diamond dust the front slope of the mound was a muddy adventure for pitchers last night. Today figures to be one of the worst days of the season for a pticher to try to negotiate the "landing spot" in front of the rubber.

Writing, meet wall. Is it so difficult to envision a scenario where Anderson throws a pitch, his cleats give, he does his signature collapse only this time in quite the heap, and goes on the DL for 6 weeks? Seems as likely as not to this nervous Nellie.

I wish the A's had called up Dan Straily to make this start and just pushed Anderson back one day to open the series at home against Baltimore. That would be just mean an extra day of rest for each of the other starting pitchers, and a slightly compromised bullpen for a few days (if you optioned Jesse Chavez and then recalled Evan Scribner for Straily when Scribner's 10 days were up). You could also have foregone the Casper Wells 5-day legacy and just optioned Michael Taylor to make room for Straily.

Anyhow, hopefully Anderson pitches another 2-hit shutout at Fenway and makes my elevated cortisol levels look foolish. I just hope Brett comes out of this start healthy, because I can't see worse timing than this start coming on that mound.