The Boston Red Sox are doing quite a bit of injury and load management at the moment as they try to navigate their way to the end of the regular season and into the playoffs.
That includes catcher Adley Rutschman, their biggest trade deadline acquisition. Rutschman is sitting for a second straight game Tuesday, after also missing two games last week due to a hyperextended right elbow.
Interim manager Chad Tracy revealed during his weekly interview with WEEI's Rich & Ken with Ted Johnson that the team is "not completely out of the woods" yet when it comes to Rutschman's sore elbow. Listen to the full interview above.
"He's dealing with some stuff with that elbow," Tracy said. "We're not completely out of the woods. We are still monitoring and trying to give him appropriate time to make sure everything's OK. It's probably something we're going to deal with off and on through the year. They're looking at different avenues to help alleviate that. We have to be mindful of that. He's active, but keeping him healthy and doing what we need to do to make sure we keep him healthy is important."
That sounded ominous and set off some alarm bells on social media, but Tracy did strike a softer tone a little while later when he elaborated on the situation during his pregame media availability.
"I wouldn't say it's alarming, no, and I wouldn't say he hasn't bounced back," Tracy said. "It's just something that we're we're dealing with. And again, he played in New York the other day, it was sore, and he got three hits. So, I wouldn't say it's alarming. It's just there's spots that come up with it where, if it's sore and you feel like you can give it a little bit of an opportunity to calm down, that he's in a better spot. So, alarmed, no. Like, I know it's there. I know it's something we just gotta continue to monitor, and hopefully if we give him some rest and then go, he can get past it. So, we'll see. It's it's kind of like a day-to-day situation with him and monitoring where he's at."
Chad Tracy on Adley Rutschman continuing to deal with a sore elbow: “I wouldn’t say it’s alarming. It’s just there’s spots that come up with it where, if it’s sore and you feel like you can give it a little bit of an opportunity to calm down, that he’s in a better spot.” pic.twitter.com/86Mipo97nj
— WEEI (@WEEI) September 1, 2026
Tracy added that Rutschman did go for an MRI, and that it showed nothing beyond the initial hyperextension and lingering soreness. Rutschman arrived in Boston recovering from a different injury - left wrist inflammation - but that was on the opposite arm.
The Red Sox' other big deadline acquisition, infielder Curtis Mead, has been out with an even more serious injury, having fractured his left wrist in his first game with the team. Asked if it's frustrating to not have Rutschman nor Mead healthy, Tracy declined to make any excuses.
"It's just part of it," Tracy said. "It's not frustrating for me, or woe is me, or this stinks, or whatever. It's part of it. It's just, he [Rutschman] is a little banged up. We still have him, if we do it right. Same thing with like, [Garrett] Whitlock had to go down for a while. It's like, that can be very frustrating, right? But it's like, I don't view it that way. I view it as like, now we got him back, and we get him rolling. And we do the same thing with [Tyron] Guerrero, we do the same thing with Adley. And if we can continue to play good baseball, and we go out there yesterday and the guys that came up here to fill in for those guys went out there and did great, did the job, and we won a game. So, it's like, let's try to do that as much as possible over the next 10 days, and maybe put ourselves in a position where, here comes Guerrero and here comes Adley healthy, here comes all these guys, and you look like you're in a really, really good spot. So, you just deal with it. You just deal with it and move on."
