Xander Bogaerts reinstated from disabled list, Brock Holt goes on it

The Red Sox got some good news and bad news ahead of the opener of their three-game set back at home against the Rays. The good news is that Xander Bogaerts is coming back from the disabled list, returning in time to play the same team against whom he injured himself in the first place. The bad news is that they were able to make room on the active roster by placing Brock Holt on the 10-day disabled list with a hamstring strain.

It goes without saying that getting Bogaerts back is a huge deal for this team. They’ve been doing just fine without him record-wise — the team went 11-4 in the shortstop’s absence — but the offense has hit a bit of a snag of late. Bogaerts, of course, was looking like a legitimate breakout before he went down, hitting .368/.400/.711 over 40 plate appearances before the injury. It’s also encouraging that he was indeed able to make it back within that 10-20 day window the team presented. We’ll have to see if he can still be the same kind of hitter he was before the injury, but it’s worth noting he had a couple of extra-base knocks in his lone rehab appearance with Pawtucket. Just having his presence back in the middle of the order does deepen the offense a bit, though.

We were wondering how they were going to make room for their shortstop once he returned, and as it turned out it wasn’t as difficult a decision as it could have been. On Thursday night, Holt pulled up with a hamstring injury on a double and it turns out the strain was bad enough that he’ll miss at least 10 days of time. The utility man was sort of on the outs with a section of the fanbase because of poor hitting, but over the last couple of weeks he has been red-hot, making this just about the worst time he could have went down with something like this. Hopefully he won’t miss too much time and he’ll be able to carry over some of that momentum whenever he is able to make his return. For now, though, Bogaerts is back at shortstop, and on normal days Tzu-Wei Lin will be on the bench with Eduardo Nuñez and Rafael Devers flanking Bogaerts in the infield.