Every once in whilewhen there's nothing else going on, and I'd rather dip my groin in a wood chipper than talk about Clay Buchholz hanging out at FoxwoodsI'll hop on the Red Sox page Baseball-Reference, and see if anything jumps out.
Today was one of those "onces in a while," and here's the result:
Can you name the only Sox player to appear in every game this season?
Assuming you read the title of this post, you know the answer:
It's Adrian Gonzalez. And here are a few more facts about Adrian
He missed three games all of last season. He missed only two games in 2010, only two games in 2009, zero games in 2008 and only one in 2007.
In other words, over the last five and a half seasons, Adrian Gonzalez has played in 877 of a possible 885 games. Pretty, pretty, prettttttyyyyy remarkable. Don't you think?
Boston Red Sox
For all the criticism (and a lot of it is very fair) that Gonzalez gets around here, the one thing we have to give him credit for is the ability to stay healthy. Now of course, "the ability to stay healthy" is a tricky concept. No doubt there's some luck involved when you go that long without missing a significant stretch of games. But there also has to be a sizable chunk of toughness. There's no way it's easy. So, there's that. The guy plays every day. We've got to hand it to him.
Sure, it would be a lot easier to shower him with praise if he did a little more with all that playing time. But that's improving, too. Gonzalez hit .429 (9-21) over the last five games of the home stand, with four runs scored and seven batted in. His average is "up" to .269, he ranks second on the Sox with 43 RBI and his 24 doubles rank first in the American League.
It's coming together. Slowly but surely.
At the very least, we know he'll be out there.
Rich can be reached at rlevine@comcastsportsnet.com. Follow Rich on Twitter at http:twitter.comrich_levine