Alex Cora Explains Why Xander Bogaerts, J.D. Martinez Out For Red Sox-Phillies Finale

With the series taken care of, the Boston Red Sox are sitting a few of their top guys Sunday against the Philadelphia Phillies.

Xander Bogearts and J.D. Martinez will get a rest day for the third game of the series, while Alex Verdugo will be out as he deals with a nagging hamstring issue.

“Trying to give him one more day,” Alex Cora said of Verdugo, who came out of Friday night’s game and didn’t play Saturday, either, in Boston’s 4-3 victory. “If needed, we’ll use him but we’ll try to stay away from him.”

As for Bogaerts and Martinez, the Red Sox manager saw the opportunity to give them a break amid a tough stretch of games, assuring neither player is banged up.

“(Bogaerts is) the most physical shortstop in the big leagues and it’s hard to do what he is doing and you start looking ahead, right, and what’s coming is long games for a long period of time, and, you know, we take advantage of today and tomorrow, hopefully we stay away from him today. But, you know, I can tell, I can tell when he needs it. And there’s no DH so we have to do it also. J.D., he’s been grinding, playing a lot a lot in the outfield. We talked about it, actually, three days ago. He wanted to play. Last night I asked him how you feel, he’s like, I’m playing. But something happened between the clubhouse and the bus, that I was like, no, no, we have to stay away from this, we got to be smart about it, we got to take care of these guys.”

Following Sunday’s final game against the Phillies, the Red Sox head home to face the Atlanta Braves and Houston Astros for a five-game homestand.