Red Sox set to activate Rajai Davis, Blaine Boyer; option Hector Velazquez, Deven Marrero

After Wednesday’s big win, the Red Sox roster is set to look a bit different heading into Thursday’s series finale in Cleveland. The newly acquired Rajai Davis is expected to join the team for this game, as is Blaine Boyer, who is coming off the disabled list. To make room, Deven Marrero and Hector Velazquez are being optioned back to Triple-A Pawtucket.

Davis, of course, was acquired in a trade with the Oakland A’s on Wednesday. It was unclear at the time of the trade whether or not he’d actually be able to join the team in Cleveland or if they’d have to wait to travel back to Boston for the weekend series against Baltimore before officially getting him on the roster. Apparently, he’ll be able to get out to Cleveland, and you can expect him to get a pretty large standing ovation at some point tonight given what he did for that team in Game Seven of last year’s World Series. As for what he brings to the Red Sox, I discussed that a bit in the post above and will have more on that on this very webpage in just a few minutes.

Boyer, meanwhile, gives them another right-handed option out of the bullpen. The Red Sox relief corps has obviously been the center of attention of late, as they’ve hit a bit of a rough patch relative to where they were earlier in the year. On the one hand, Boyer has been surprisingly solid with the big-league squad this year and deserves a spot on the major-league roster. On the other hand, he’s clearly behind the top four in the bullpen and probably behind Hembree as well. That leaves him in Fernando Abad territory in blowouts.

Marrero and Velazquez are in similar positions as a couple of players who are getting finished with extremely short stints in the majors in which they saw zero action. Fortunately for them, September is right around the corner and they will both be back up here when rosters expand.