Red Sox will have competition for rotation spots

The impending returns of a pair of injured starters is about to create an internal competition for spots in the Boston Red Sox rotation.

The Boston Red Sox will soon have an abundance of starting pitchers at their disposal, which means someone is going to be left out in the cold.

With Eduardo Rodriguez and Joe Kelly nearing the end of their rehab assignments, the Red Sox will have some decisions to make to determine which five pitchers are going to stick in their rotation.

This pits the members of the Red Sox pitching staff in an internal competition for those coveted rotation spots. Teams facing this dilemma may toy with the idea of temporarily using a six-man rotation until the situation sorts itself out, but manager John Farrell revealed he has no intention of going that route, in part due to the team’s upcoming schedule.

"“I would say probably not a six-man at this point just because of the number of off days,” Farrell told reporters on Wednesday, per WEEI.com. “I mentioned the 19th and the 23rd — I think 1o days later we have two more around the San Francisco series. A Monday and a Thursday are off. All that will be up for review depending on the needs of our guys, if there is an extra day needed. I think from a workload standpoint we’re approaching a point in time where we’re going to get a little bit of a break with the number of off days.”"

There’s no need to use six starters when the schedule has extra days of rest already built in. Besides, when you have a guy at the top of the rotation making the kind of money David Price is getting, do you really want to limit his starts? If Farrell is intent on narrowing his rotation down to five starters, that means two of the seven potential options will get bumped.

Next: Who is a lock to stay in?