Red Sox place Tanner Houck, Kutter Crawford on restricted list for series in Toronto

With the Red Sox scheduled to head up to Toronto this week to take on the Blue Jays for a four-game series, the big question was who would be available. With the vaccination laws for people crossing the border into Canada (and vice versa) no longer making an exception for athletes and entertainers, players who are not vaccinated against COVID-19 are not allowed to enter play in Toronto. For the Red Sox, we have known for a bit that Tanner Houck would be one of the players not available for this series, but others were not known. There was some speculation around a few different players, but as it turns out there’s only one more player.

The team announced Monday afternoon that they had placed Tanner Houck and Kutter Crawford on the restricted list for this series. Tyler Danish and John Schreiber will take their places on the roster. The restricted list here works similarly to the COVID list where players can be added and removed from the 40-man more easily than other situations, which applies to Schreiber who was not on the 40-man prior to this move.

As mentioned above, we’ve known for some time that Houck would miss this series, which is why Garrett Whitlock has shifted to the rotation at least temporarily. The latter is expected to make Houck’s start on Thursday, though that has not yet been made official. Crawford, meanwhile, was serving as a multi-inning reliever, a role that will be taken for the time being by Danish. Danish was just optioned prior to Sunday’s game, but that was largely a paper move as they knew he’d be added again on Monday.

As for Schreiber, he provides some shorter relief from the right side. He’s a somewhat interesting pitcher who does have some major-league experience and relies on deception with a strange arm angle to get results. That’s worked very well in the minors, never posting an ERA over 3.00 in his minor-league career. This season with Worcester he’s allowed four runs (two earned) in 10 ¹⁄₃ innings, striking out 13 and walking two. It’s been less successful in the majors, pitching to a 5.97 ERA over 31 ²⁄₃ innings, though with a more encouraging 3.89 FIP. He’ll likely just serve in a lower leverage role for this four-game series before heading back down to Triple-A.