Francona deals with Lowell's absence

Back at the park. Seems like I never left.

About last night's 19-17 Red Sox victory over the Rangers, manager Terry Francona said: "I actually woke up about 6:30 and was kind of grumpy and was thinking 'Why? We won.'
"It was unique. "I don't know if too many of us can say we've been in games like that. It was an interesting game.''

Francona on Mike Lowell, who suffered an oblique injury during his at-bat in the sixth inning Tuesday night: "Mikey got looked at today, he got an MRI, and we're going to need to DL him. We're not going to know today or tomorrow the length of this. We're all hoping it'll be shorter, rather than longer but how he responds to it is going to be what's meaningful.

"The things that worry you with the oblique are -- you always hear the doctor say, when it stops hurting, wait a week -- because these things have a way of nagging.''

When Lowell left the game last night, Kevin Youkilis moved from first to third base and Sean Casey came in at first.

"Putting Casey in, we have a guy that's hitting .350, professional hitter, and the ability to move Youk over to third is huge. Or you can't play Case, there's nowhere to play him. We also have the ability to let [Jed] Lowrie play third, put [Alex] Cora at short, and if we have the lead tonight we'll probably do that anyway.

"So there's some ways we can make this work. We're still comfortable in the fact that we can win and feel comfortable that we're good enough to win with the guys we have.''