Eduardo Rodriguez will not start for the Red Sox on Opening Day after all, but he should be ready to take the mound fairly soon.
Boston manager Alex Cora on Sunday said Rodriguez is feeling positive about Saturday’s bullpen session after getting scratched from Thursday’s season opener due to dead arm. The left-hander will throw in the bullpen again Monday.
“He feels good about his bullpen,” Cora told reporters, via MassLive’s Christopher Smith. “He’s going to get back on the mound tomorrow and we’ll see where we’re at with him. But he’s feeling better. Obviously we’re running out of time with a lot of things and then the adjustments that we have to make as far as like the virus (COVID-19). So we’ll address that when we have to.”
Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom did not seem concerned about Rodriguez either.
“It’s more of a day-by-day thing,” Bloom said, via Smith. “He had a great day yesterday, which is good. That’s awesome. We continue to feel really good about this just being a short-term hiccup, making sure we take care of him. But in terms of specifics on when we’ll get him back out there, we don’t have those yet.”
Nathan Eovaldi will get the ball Thursday when the Red Sox begin their 2021 campaign against the Baltimore Orioles at Fenway Park. Neither Cora nor Bloom offered an official timetable for Rodriguez’s return, but it sounds like he should be back shortly.
