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.