After a day of examinations and rest didn't offer much in the way of improvement, Victor Martinez was officially placed on the disabled list this afternoon with a fracture in the thumb of his catching hand, further swelling the ranks of quality players sitting on the sidelines for Boston.

Martinez broke the thumb on Sunday, taking a foul ball off his glove. Today, he was officially put on the shelf, with a return just after the All-Star break likely.

"It's not fun. I wish that I could do anything to no go on the DL. But it's painful. I've just got to take it now day by day, and see how it feels from here on," Martinez said.
Gustavo Molina -- no relation to the trio of catchers who have populated major-league rosters for the better part of the decade - was called up from Triple-A Pawtucket to take Martinez' spot on the roster, and Jason Varitek will slide in to a starting role at catcher.

The biggest problem initially was fitting the swollen thumb into the catcher's mitt, said manager Terry Francona. Martinez and his doctors thought that if the swelling went down Monday, he might be able to play. That didn't happen, so Martinez went to the 15-day DL.

"He was hoping that if he got the swelling out of there, that he would be able to handle it. There was a thought in our medical people that could be the case. But he's pretty tender today, so that's not realistic," Francona said.

Both catching a ball and trying to swing a bat are equally painful at the moment, Martinez said.

"I can't put my hand in the glove, and I can't hold the bat," he said.

So now Martinez, who was hitting .289 with nine home runs and 38 RBI when the injury struck, can look forward to at least two weeks of inactivity as the area calms down.

"We need to let this thing heal a little bit," Francona said. "He had not chance of catching in the next week or two. It would be impossible. So he'll be DL'd, hopefully get through the All-Star break and he'll be close to being ready. That would be the hope. We'll see. Just got to give that a little time to heal. But it wasn't a break to the point where we needed to put a pin in or anything like that. so if there is a bright side, this thing is not going to be long-term."

Molina is likely to catch two or three games over that stretch, with Varitek taking the rest. Tuesday, Molina was out in the bullpen catching knuckleballer Tim Wakefield, and showed enough promise that the team can start Wakefield with confidence this coming weekend.

Molina has experience with the knuckler, having caught knuckleballer Charlie Haeger during parts of three seasons in the Chicago White Sox minor-league system. He feels about as comfortable as a catcher can feel with a knuckleball fluttering at him.

"That's good enough for me," Red Sox manager Terry Francona said.

In all likelihood, Molina will catch Wakefield against the Baltimore Orioles on Friday.
The 28-year-old journeyman represents something of a worst-case scenario for the Red Sox and their catching depth. Victor Martinez was placed on the disabled list on Tuesday with a fracture in his left thumb, and both of the Opening Day catchers on the Triple-A Pawtucket roster are on the disabled list already.

That left Molina, who is hitting .239 with an on-base percentage of .292 in 67 at-bats with the PawSox.

But he has a reputation of having good hands behind the plate, and that means he'll be on knuckleball duty on Friday.

"Gustavo's a good catch and throw guy, with good hands, who did a nice job out there catching Wakefield today," general manager Theo Epstein said.

Haeger throws a harder knuckleball (75-80 miles per hour) than does Wakefield (65-67 miles per hour). But no one in the major leagues has thrown a better knuckleball over the last 15 years than Wakefield has.

"Wakefield is one of the best right now, and for a long time," said Molina, who has seen spot duty in the major leagues with the White Sox, the Orioles and the Mets. "[Haeger] throws a little bit harder, and it sometimes breaks a lot. Either way, you've got to relax and don't try too much -- just catch the ball."