According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Oakland A's (and former Red Sox) infielder Nomar Garciaparra has yet to decide whether he will play beyond the 2009 season. Garciaparra, who considered retiring prior to the 2009 season before signing with Oakland just before spring training, said that he will consider his options once he has gone home following what he deemed a season that left him "disappointed, upset and embarrassed" by virtue of his club's last-place standing in the A.L. West.
 
"I really haven't thought about it," Garciaparra told the Chronicle of playing beyond this year. "We'll just finish off the week. I'll go home and enjoy the kids. I don't know what the future will be. I do still love playing, for sure."

Red Sox manager Terry Francona, in his weekly interview on the Dale & Holley Show, said that "it's a little premature" to say who the Sox will use in Game 1 of a potential American League Division Series against the Angels, particularly since the team has yet to see how either Jon Lester (knee) or Josh Beckett (back) has pitched in the wake of recent injuries.
 
That said, Francona did allow that the Sox "really, really caught a break" when Lester emerged relatively unscathed from a line drive off the side of his right knee in Yankee Stadium on Friday. The manager admitted that he feared for the worst when he saw the injury and how the pitcher reacted.
 
"It was a bad feeling," Francona said. "By the time I got out there, I saw it first hand, I heard it, I heard his reaction when he was laying on the ground, and he’s a tough kid. I thought, ‘You know what? This kid broke his...