[Sox fan in Tex]

From the Herald's website this morning:

Posted by Steve Buckley at 12:22 pm

CLEARWATER, Fla. – The unsettled state of the Red Sox’ bullpen is now even more so, with the team announcing this morning that reliever Mike Timlin, who is suffering from back pain, will be shut down for a week.

“He’s going to be one week, no throwing,” said Sox manager Terry Francona. “The tenderness he felt . . . is in a smaller area, which I think is good. But he still feels it, and we don’t want this to turn into a season-long fiasco, where he feels OK, the next week he feels a little worse, and two weeks later he’s worse.”

The goal, Francona stated, is to attack the problem now, “so that he can pitch six months pain free.

“We’ll see how he gets ready for the season,” said the manager. “I think he fully expects to be ready for the season. But at the same time, the reason we’re slowing him down is because we want him healthy. We don’t want him to limp through the season.

“I’m disappointed it got to this point. The doctors still kind of reassure us that he is getting better. But he felt something, he threw 40 pitches (on the side), he threw the ball great, but we don’t want it to be great, good, have it build up to the point where he can’t throw the ball like he can.”

Roster moves:

The Red Sox are in Clearwater today to play the Phillies at Bright House Networks Field. Before the game, Francona announced the first roster cuts of the spring, with five players being sent back to the minor-league complex.

The best-known name on the list is outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury, considered by many to be a future star. Also cut was righthander David Pauley, who made three starts for the Sox last season. The other cuts were righthander Edgar Martinez, infielder Chad Spann and first baseman Luis Jimenez.