Normally any baseball team will try to get its nine best players into the starting lineup every night, but with the way the roster is currently constructed, that isn’t possible for the Red Sox right now.
Following Masataka Yoshida’s activation from the 60-day injured list, the Red Sox find themselves in a peculiar spot. They have five starting-caliber outfielders with Jarren Duran, Ceddanne Rafaela, Wilyer Abreu, Roman Anthony and Yoshida, but between the three outfield positions and the DH, they only have four spots in the lineup to accommodate them.
It doesn’t help that four of those five bat left-handed, so a regular platoon isn’t really a solution, and while manager Alex Cora could theoretically start everyone by shifting Rafaela to second base, that would also take the club’s best defender out of center field and squeeze someone like Marcelo Mayer or Romy Gonzalez out of the lineup.
No matter what Cora does, every night someone who’d ideally be starting will have to come off the bench.
Is that a luxury for a manager or a challenge? Cora said it can be both, but that he plans to lean into his depth for however long he has to.
“The game has nine innings and when you play teams like (the Rays) it’s good to have a left-handed hitter on the bench, because they’re going to mix and match and at one point we can deploy one of them,” Cora said. “It’s a deeper roster than in the past, we feel good about it and the guys are ready.
“It doesn’t matter if you start or you come in late,” he continued. “They understand that we’re trying to win as many games as possible and one day you’re not going to start, but that doesn’t mean you’re not going to play.”
On Wednesday, when Yoshida was activated, Rafaela was the odd man out. On Thursday Yoshida came off the bench, and even before Yoshida’s return Anthony regularly bounced between the corner outfield spots and DH. Even Duran — who started all but two games last season — has gotten more rest than usual thanks in part to the club’s roster crunch.
Things get even tighter when a left-hander is on the mound. The Red Sox already had to sit one of their regular starters for Rob Refsnyder before Yoshida was activated. Now they’ll have to sit two.
In the long run this situation likely isn’t sustainable, and it’s possible the Red Sox could try to move an outfielder ahead of the trade deadline even if they otherwise try to buy. But having too many good players isn’t necessarily a bad problem to have, and in the short term Cora will have an interesting challenge trying to manage everyone’s playing time and ensure his best players get as many at bats as possible.
