While the reigning World Series Champions head down to Florida for spring training, they will be missing one of their starting pitchers, Ryan Dempster has decided he will not play this season, citing physical reasons and wanting to spend time with his family as his reasoning. He pitched all of last season to help get Boston into the playoffs, but did not make any starts in the postseason.
He made headlines when he “accidentally” hit Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez when the Yankees were in Boston. Dempster was very vocal about disagreeing with the league allowing Rodriguez to play last season as he awaited the decision on his appeal of his suspension for being connected to the Biogenesis clinic. He was suspended five games for the incident. Dempster is 132-133 with a 4.57 ERA in his career.
