Month: August 2026

When three active Red Sox rehab assignments must end, who will this force off the roster?

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When the rehab assignments of Red Sox players Trevor Story, Roman Anthony, and Isiah Kiner-Falefa end sometime over the next two weeks, who will this force off the roster?

TLDR: the top candidates for moving players off the Red Sox roster as rehabbing players return soon, IMO, are optioning Andruw Monasterio, and/or DFA’ing Isiah Kiner-Falefa and/or DFA’ing Eli White. But they may not need to do most of those.

This chart will help you figure it out.

Scenario in which no one is forced off

Some people think bringing up Roman Anthony and Trevor Story means two other players will need to be removed from the active roster. But it doesn’t. That’s because rosters expand by 2 this coming Tuesday, and all three rehab assignments will be allowed to go as long as the following Friday or later. When rosters expand, the Red Sox will be allowed to bring up either 1 pitcher and 1 position player, or 2 position players. So if they wait until Tuesday or later to bring those guys up, they don’t need to kick anyone off the roster to do it.

But then there will be the problem of Isiah Kiner-Falefa. They have to bring him up no later than September 8. If they don’t, they have to designate him for assignment, which would basically mean they’re releasing him. But that might not be such a bad way to go. He’s a free agent after this season, and the Red Sox are unlikely to try to get him back with the emergence of so many other good middle infield options on the team. They wouldn’t be planning to give him a qualifying offer either, given that it would be about 4 times what he made in 2026. So the loss would be just 4 weeks of IKF plus possibly his play in the playoffs. It wouldn’t be a huge sacrifice.

Scenarios in which one player is moved off

If they don’t want to release anybody, they could instead bring IKF onto the active roster while sending down an infielder who has minor league options. Mickey Gasper, Nick Sogard, Anthony Seigler, and Andruw Monasterio all have 2 minor league options remaining. Of those, Monasterio makes the most sense, as the other three have hot bats right now, while Monasterio’s went stone cold nearly 3 weeks ago. Plus his defense is inconsistent, unreliable. I like the guy a lot as a person, but sending Monasterio down makes the most sense.

Moving additional players off

Frankly I like the idea of bringing Romy Gonzalez up now to replace Monasterio. He’s been hitting well over his current 13-game AAA stint, with a .796 OPS, and .929 over his last 8 games. His defense is pretty reliable, and he’s always been basically an upgraded version of Monasterio at the plate. To bring him up, though, you need to kick someone additional off when IKF’s rehab is over.

Same thing if the Red Sox opt to bring up a pitcher when rosters expand. You have to do more than just option Monasterio.

That could be releasing IKF, as mentioned before. Or you could option one of the hot bats, like Seigler or Jarren Duran, the least hot bats among them. I don’t think they’d option Duran under any circumstances, though. Or you could DFA/release Jahmai Jones (no options) and his super hot bat, though they won’t. There is too much value in his bat as a pinch hitter and DH, and they can control him through 2030 if desired.

That leaves Eli White instead, whose bat has been nothing special. Actually quite poor. But he’s not on the team for his bat – he’s on it for exceptional outfield defense and elite running speed. The Red Sox as an organization were so historically and positively impacted by that stolen base Dave Roberts made in the 2004 ALCS, that they’ve kept their eyes out ever since for blazing fast pinch runners to bring up for the playoffs. Eli White is that guy, it seems.

But when Roman Anthony comes back, that pinch-running, late-innings-defense guy could be Jarren Duran. And when Trevor Story comes back, that guy could be Trevor Story – when he’s on the bench. And if one of those guys gets injured, they’ve got a very fast Nate Eaton in AAA as a backup plan. So Eli White just isn’t as important to this team once Anthony is back. As a mid-season pickup, they can’t make him a qualifying offer when he becomes a free agent this offseason, so there’s no prospect of picking up a draft pick by keeping him. He’s not likely to be re-signed by the Sox next season either, what with Rafaela, Anthony, Abreu, Duran, Yoshida, Jahmai Jones, and Kristian Campbell all due to return next year as potential outfielders.

Because White has no options left, the only way the Red Sox could remove him from the roster would be by DFAing/releasing him. But, as with IKF, the loss from DFAing/releasing Eli White in the coming week or so would be quite small, with such a small amount of time he’d be remaining on team.

So there you go – if they want to remove up to 3 guys to make room for returning players, my picks would be optioning Andruw Monasterio and DFAing Eli White and Isiah Kiner-Falefa.

And if they don’t need quite that many now, they may when Curtis Mead comes back just before the playoffs.

Sam Antonacci seemed to intentionally move into the path of the pitch that plunked him

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Sam Antonacci was not a name that I knew before last night. But the Chicago White Sox left fielder definitely got the notice and ire of Red Sox fans when, on the first pitch of the game, he grounded out to first base, and then hit Boston Red Sox first baseman Willson Contreras with an obviously intentional elbow as he ran by. When Contreras asked Antonacci if everything was okay between them, Antonacci just ignored him.

Then in the third inning, when Antonacci was up for the next time, a 93 mph Sonny Gray sinker plunked him on the thigh. Some speculated it was retaliation, but I don’t think the Red Sox would intentionally put him on base in an 0-2 count with a 1-run lead. However, it did look to me like Antonacci may have intentionally moved into the path of the baseball. So I paused the video and was able to see that, had Antonacci just stayed still, he probably wouldn’t have been hit. Certainly not had he done what most hitters do on a low and inside pitch, which is to scooch their feet backward. Instead, Antonacci pivoted on his front foot, so the back of his front leg faced the pitcher’s mound, but also moved closer to the plate. You can see it in these pictures:

In the left frame, the ball is approaching, and Antonacci has not yet begun his attempt to “get out of the way” of the pitch. The second frame is just before the ball strikes him. The third frame is the two images superimposed.

On this superimposed image you can see that his thigh was initially not in the path of the ball, but then moved forward until it was.

On the second frame, notice that even as he is turning away from the ball, he is keeping his eye on the ball. He would do that if he wanted to be precise about where the ball hits him.

So it seemed pretty obvious to me that Antonacci intentionally helped ensure the ball hit him, while disguising it as an attempt to get out of the way of the ball. Kind of the way he intentionally elbowed Contreras while disguising it as accidental contact. Perhaps with the elbow he was trying to set Contreras off, and get him another suspension? That part we can’t know.

But I did feel confident that if Antonacci is the kind of guy who pulls stunts like this, then we might be able to get some extra confirmation of that fact by observing that he has a high hit-by-pitch total. So I looked up the numbers.

Confirmed.

He was actually tied with Willson Contreras for second place on the MLB hit by pitch leaders list at the time of the elbow throw, and for first place in the American League. Perhaps the elbow was out of resentment for not being the outright leader in the stat? Probably not, but it’s fun to speculate surprising if unlikely reasons.

So now he’s in second place by himself, and he got there in relatively few plate appearances. I wonder if he has the highest rate of being hit by pitches? It turns out, for hitters with at least 100 PA, he does:

This can’t just be bad luck.

Could it be because of crowding the plate? Yes. Antonacci does appear to crowd the plate like Contreras does. But he also appears to have a talent for intentionally adding to his HBP totals on the right kind of low and inside pitch.