FORT MYERS, Fla. - It appears the Red Sox are very close to locking in on their 28-man roster.
The team announced after its second-to-last spring training tilt - a 2-0 loss to the Twins - it had selected the contract of minor-league free agent pitcher Tyler Danish for the big league roster. Clearing out a spot on the 40-man roster for Danish came courtesy the team placing Chris Sale on the 60-day injured list.
Earlier in the day, Red Sox manager Alex Cora announced Kutter Crawford would be making the Opening Day roster.
The 27-year-old Danish last pitched in the major leagues with the White Sox, appearing in seven games. His big-league career has totaled 11 appearances over three seasons.
In five Grapefruit League appearances, Danish gave up one run on four hits over six innings, striking out five. All of his spring training outings came in relief.
(For some interesting insight on Danish, click here for a chat he conducted with MLB Trade Rumors in early February.)
Crawford has been one of the surprises of camp, opening eyes with a high-90's fastball while striking out eight in his four Grapefruit League innings.
"He's gonna start the season with us," Cora said of the 26-year-old righty. "We’ve been talking about him the whole camp, velocity-wise, he’s up there. the action of his pitches, they’re really good.
"He worked hard, you know, he earned it. Coming into the situation, probably early in camp, he had no chance probably. I don't want to say it that way but it was a guy, there, yeah, we look at him but probably better off go to Triple-A and all that but he kept pushing and pushing and the more we talked about our rotation and what we're trying to accomplish early on in the season and throughout the season, he made a lot of sense. And the way we're going to use him, we’re going to keep using him in multiple innings. You asked me yesterday, you know, he's gonna pitch multiple innings. Where? We don’t know. Like, last year, Garrett pitched in a 10-0 game, Game 3 against Baltimore and I still remember, I was trying to get him a clean inning and it never happened, right? He came in with the bases loaded and two outs and probably that was the only game that it was low leverage, right? It felt like that. After that, it was either a tie game or we were up, so hopefully, we can do same thing with Kutter but, I mean, we’ll use him the way we use him but he did an amazing job. We're very proud of him."
It appears as though Jonathan Arauz will slot in as the final position player, with the Red Sox sending Rob Refsnyder and Franchy Cordero to Triple-A.