Rafael Devers to be activated for Saturday’s game

The Red Sox are still rolling after winning the first game out of the All-Star break, but they are also a little banged up right now. Much of that is in the rotation with Eduardo Rodriguez and Steven Wright currently on the shelf, but the team’s infield depth has been getting tested all year as well. Between Dustin Pedroia and Marco Hernandez being out for the entire season (besides three games) and various other injuries, there has been a lot of mixing and matching. Well, Friday night brought some good news and some bad news. The bad news was Brock Holt having to leave the game, though that injury doesn’t appear to be overly serious. The good news is that Rafael Devers is set to be activated off the disabled list for Saturday’s game in Detroit.

This is clearly good news, but it’s also not much of a surprise. Devers was placed on the 10-day disabled list just ahead of the All-Star break, but it was never expected to be anything serious. Of course, since it was a shoulder injury there was always a chance it could linger, but the realistic hope was that he’d spend something close to the minimum amount of time on the shelf. As it turns out, that’s exactly what’ll happen. Saturday marks the ten-day mark since his initial DL stint. For the next few days, expect Devers to handle third and Eduardo Núñez to shift to second base while Holt heals up. After that, there will be plenty of mixing and matching.

To make room, Sean McAdam is reporting that Bobby Poyner will lose his roster spot to create space. This is not official just yet so we’ll update this if something changes, but it would make sense as Poyner has been up and down all year. The lefty will get a chance to stick in the majors at some point, but it’s looking very clear that it won’t be this year. This move also gets the Red Sox back to a “normal” roster with 12 pitches and 13 position players, though they are also back to having zero lefties in the bullpen.