Company on corner
Nunez, Devers may share
CHICAGO — Third baseman
Rafael Devers will likely rejoin the Red Sox in Atlanta on Tuesday, but manager Alex Cora left the door open for the possibility that Devers will not be the full-time third baseman.
A platoon situation with Eduardo Nunez could be in the works, Cora said.
“Maybe, yeah — maybe not,” said Cora. “We’ll see how it goes.”
Nunez is much more assured on defense at third base, where he played most of the time after the
Ian Kinsler acquisition.
“One thing for sure, Raffy needs to play better,” said Cora. “We knew that. The whole season offensively he’s been up and down. Defensively he’s made his errors. He needs to be better and that’s the bottom line. We need to win ballgames and whoever is playing best is going to play.”
Cora lauded Nunez. “Eduardo is swinging the bat well, he’s more direct to the ball, he’s putting on good at-bats,” said Cora. “The luxury we have is we can play him at second, too. We can DH him when J.D. (Martinez) plays in the outfield. It’s another one of those good problems to have, I guess. We’ll see how it goes.
Dombro checks in
All along, the Red Sox and Dave Dombrowski said for nobody to get their hopes up about being able to trade for a player before Friday night’s waiver deadline. The club’s best record would work against it, because it would have last dibs on players as other teams could put in claims out of sincere interest or just to block other teams.
Sure enough, that’s what happened, Dombrowski said before last night’s game.
“There wasn’t one player that we had interest in that we would have liked to pursue if they got back to us,” said Dombrowski. “Some guys got through waivers but we really didn’t significantly pursue any of those players.”
Dombrowski said the Sox put in a claim on one player in order to block a National League team from getting him.
The Red Sox will not call up reliever Durbin Feltman, their third-round pick who thrived in Single A, said Dombrowski, but could consider others in the minor league system not on the 40-man roster to come up later this month.
Price may throw
David Price might be able to throw a baseball with intensity today, a major proving point for when he can return to action after he was hit in the left wrist by a come-backer last week. He has been scratched from tomorrow’s start in Atlanta.
Price played catch yesterday, and felt “OK” according to Cora. “He said he had no problems with it but he was just playing catch, it wasn’t full blast. It was a good first step, he’s confident he’ll be able to let it fly a little bit (today) and we go from there.”
Sale feels ‘good’
Chris Sale surprised even Cora when he ran by him in the dugout to go throw in the outfield. Sale told the Sox that if he felt good enough playing catch that he was going to throw a bullpen — which he did, even though he had just concluded playing catch five days in a row.
“He feels that good,” said Cora. “I know we have to be careful but at the same time, we have to trust the player. He’s feeling that good and sometimes you’ve got to please them. You understand that we’ve got time and you’ve got to take care of them but he’s been feeling great.”
Sale did slip a bit just after he passed by Cora.
“Ooops — not that, that didn’t sound right,” said Cora. Sale was fine, and had a big grin on his face after he completed a brief session from the bullpen mound.
Three’s a charm
Cora discussed how it’s a good problem to have now that he has three catchers at the ready over the final month.
He acknowledged that with the recent elevation of play both defensively and offensively for Blake Swihart, with Christian Vazquez back from his fractured pinkie finger and Sandy Leon slumping on offense, that it’s fair to say the club does not have a No. 1 catcher at the moment.
“Blake defensively has done an outstanding job,” Cora said, “I know he doesn’t catch everybody, and at this stage, we know how comfortable we are with Sandy with certain guys, but at the same time, (Swihart’s) been catching late in the game with the game on the line so it doesn’t make any difference, it’s just a matter of how we feel on a daily basis and we go from there. He’s going to be in the mix. I know it’s hard to catch three guys in a week, I’ve been saying that but I’ll figure it out.”
Cora said Vazquez started last night because of his right-handed bat against White Sox southpaw starter Carlos Rodon.
“I know the other two are switch hitters, I felt Christian is a better right-handed hitter than Blake or Sandy,” said Cora.
As for Leon’s hitting woes — he’s at .197 — Cora said overuse during Vazquez’ absence was not a factor.
“I feel like he’s just expanding the zone,” said Cora. “He became so pull happy it hasn’t helped him. The head of the bat is going out of the zone very, very quick. When he was hitting well he was hitting the ball well the other way, he wasn’t chasing pitches and now all of a sudden it’s the other way around, he’s chasing up, he’s chasing offspeed down.
“There are certain at-bats where we know that he can be better, hopefully he can get it and stay the zone and swing the bat better.”