With Alex Bregman and Wilyer Abreu close to returning, Red Sox have difficult roster decisions to make

Boston Globe

11 hours ago

Momose would demonstrate a particular movement and Bregman would follow him, testing the strength and flexibility of his strained right quad.
Bregman moved side to side, lifted his knees to his waist while walking and at one point was skipping. The workout ended with the two playing catch, first from 60 feet and then from 90.
Bregman mimicked picking up a ground ball as he would playing third base before firing the ball to Momose.
In all, it was 45 minutes of work and Bregman was sweating when it was finished.
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The Red Sox third baseman is not ready to line a fastball into the gap and hustle into second base, far from it. But he's a lot closer to that than was expected when he was injured on May 23.
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Back then the fear was Bregman would be out 10 weeks, the same time he missed when he strained his left quad in 2021.
Now there's a chance he's back around the All-Star break, maybe even sooner.
The timeline for right fielder Wilyer Abreu, who is out with a strained left oblique, is even shorter. He has started taking batting practice and expects to be activated from the injured list on the first day he's eligible. That would be Friday in San Francisco.
He could play minor league games on Tuesday and Wednesday then fly to the West Coast to join the major league team.
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'I'm feeling great,' Abreu said Saturday. 'I'll be ready.'
The Red Sox are about to have some difficult decisions to make.
Abreu should go back into right field when he's ready. He's one of the best defensive outfielders in the game and has a .785 OPS over 196 games the last two seasons.
Roman Anthony was called up when Abreu went on the injured list. So send him back?
'We'll talk about it during the week and which route we're going to go,' Alex Cora said. 'Right now we have this 26 for the next three or four days and when we have to make a decision, we'll make a decision.'
Anthony could play left field with Jarren Duran moving to center field and Ceddanne Rafaela becoming a super sub.
Obviously Bregman goes right back into the lineup at third base once he's ready. The Red Sox desperately need his righthanded power.
Does that mean Marcelo Mayer returns to Triple A, too?
Not necessarily. Mayer could go to second base or even first base. At some point soon, the Red Sox have to see more from Kristian Campbell to justify him being in the lineup.
Campbell hit .313 with a .935 OPS in his first 28 games. He hit .158 with a .454 OPS in the 34 games that followed. The defense at second base has been a big disappointment.
Teams generally endeavor to retain the most talent they can. If Anthony, Campbell, and/or Mayer return to the minors for a few weeks, so be it.
Cora manages a fourth-place team that hasn't been over .500 since May 24. But somehow the Red Sox have all these good players they can't get into the lineup and he gets questions about it every day.
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Mayer was out of the lineup on Friday. Anthony took a seat on Saturday. It'll be somebody else's turn on Sunday.
The Sox do have a lot of good players. But too many of them are outfielders or lefthanded hitters. Chief baseball officer Craig Breslow has until the July 30 trade deadline to create a more useful roster.
It also doesn't help that Cora once again proclaimed on Saturday that Rafael Devers would only DH this season.
Devers is 28 and played 130 games at third base last season. He can't make things a little easier with an occasional game at third base?
The Sox are playing better and were two games out in the wild card when they took the field on Saturday. Imagine what they could do with a roster that works?
Peter Abraham can be reached at