Some alarm bells on Bautista's health when the day of rest Thursday became a DH role on Friday. After last playing on March 14th, even nine days off was not enough to let him play the field. That's five games played since March 9. When MLB schedules 7 games every 8 days, JB would have missed 9 of 15 played over this period.

His back injury may well be more serious, as the creaky 36-year old tries to improve on having missed more than a full season's games of the last five due to injuries, not even counting the 81 games he acted as DH in that period.

For a guy collecting $100K for every day in the regular season, whether he plays or not, I'd feel great too, if I could skip work for two-thirds of the time. Sure it's spring training, but JB did go 1 for 7 with 3 Ks and nine runners stranded in the second WBC round, and his injury precluded him from playing in his country's elimination game, right?