It became news in the spring when Sox general manager Ken Williams admitted that the organization reached out to Crede's agent, Scott Boras, about a contract extension last summer, only to be informed that the plan was for Crede to explore the free agent market when it was his time.

Whether or not Crede was even told that the Sox made inquiries about an extension in July 2007 was also debated, but he was met with this infamous quote from Williams in the spring, "That doesn't sound like that's a Kenny Williams problem to me."

Crede, however, did his best damage control with the entire scenario before the series finale with the Indians.

"Well, no one can say that because there was no extension offered to us -- at all," Crede said. "No money, no years, nothing was offered to us. So no one should say I made a mistake in turning down an extension last year because there wasn't one to turn down."

And while some team likely will pay Crede a lot of money to play third in the future, there is no doubt that red flags are going up with his back acting up yet again.

"It's nothing we expected, the way it's felt at times, but at the same time -- I'm trying to phrase this the right way -- it's just a situation where when it flares up from time to time, you just kind of have to deal with it," Crede said. "There's no need for more surgery or anything like that. Everything was structurally fine last time I had an MRI done. It's just a situation where it flared up."