Red Sox mailbag: How can roster still improve ahead of playoff push?

The Red Sox are heading into the home stretch, and with roughly six weeks to play in the regular season it should be an exciting race to the finish.

How are fans feeling leading into the playoff chase, and what concerns do people still have? We answer your questions in today’s Red Sox mailbag.

With Abraham Toro’s production falling off lately, who in the farm system would you most like to see become the right handed side of the platoon with Romy Gonzalez? — CJ D.

This won’t be a very satisfying response, but the answer is nobody. Go through the WooSox roster and you’ll see why.

Kristian Campbell? Bats right-handed. Jhostynxon Garcia? Bats right-handed. Vaughn Grissom? Bats right-handed.

Of the left-handed hitters on the WooSox who could step in against big league righties, the only viable options for a call-up are David Hamilton and Nick Sogard. Hamilton probably should be on the big league club as a bench piece, but offensively he hasn’t been nearly as productive as Toro, even accounting for Toro’s recent struggles. Maybe you could make a case for Sogard — he is also a switch-hitter, so he has that going for him — but he wouldn’t be a significant upgrade.

The best solution would be getting Marcelo Mayer back from injury, but otherwise sticking with the status quo might be the way to go. The other thing to consider is that even if Gonzalez hasn’t been a monster against righties the way he’s been against lefties, he’s still been respectable. As of this writing he’s batting .255 with a .709 OPS against righties. You’ll take that.

Maybe the approach then shouldn’t be to platoon Gonzalez, but to use him as an everyday player and move him around the way the club has with Ceddanne Rafaela. One way to do that might be to go with an outfield of Roman Anthony, Jarren Duran and Wilyer Abreu, Rafaela at second and Gonzalez at first against righties, and against lefties go with Anthony, Rafaela and Rob Refsnyder in the outfield, use Gonzalez at second and then have a right-handed hitter play first base.

Perhaps that’s how the club could get Campbell or Garcia into the fold? It’ll be interesting to see if the Red Sox opt for that route once the calendar turns to September.

Is The Password going to get called up to Boston before Kristian Campbell gets called back up for a second time? — @backtofoulke

So this is an interesting question. If the Red Sox had to call up either Campbell or Garcia, who’d get the nod first?

Putting aside roster-construction questions, both have been hitting the ball well lately.

Campbell took a little while to get going after his demotion, but in his first 23 games out of the All-Star break he batted .349 with five home runs, 15 RBI and a .998 OPS. He’s also started 14 of those games at first base, more than any other player on the WooSox over that stretch.

Garcia, meanwhile, has been a monster since he was promoted to the WooSox from Double-A. In his first 62 games since the call-up, he batted .300 with 17 home runs, 50 RBI and a .941 OPS, and over the same 23-game span since the All-Star break he’s batted .312 with eight homers, 24 RBI and a .999 OPS. Garcia hasn’t appeared in a game at first base yet, but he has gotten some work at the position pregame.

There’s a big gap between Triple-A and the majors so people should take those numbers with a grain of salt, but obviously their recent performance has been highly encouraging.

In terms of other factors, both are already on the 40-man roster so the Red Sox wouldn’t have to worry about designating anyone for assignment to clear space for them. The club also doesn’t need to worry about service time. Campbell already has a long-term extension and we’re late enough in the season that Garcia would still qualify as a rookie next year even if he were called up now.

So who has the edge? My intuition is Garcia, the reason being that when I asked Alex Cora on Friday what kind of reports he’s been getting on Campbell, his response was pretty muted.

“He’s producing, but there is still work to do down there,” Cora said.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

Should we expect any more bullpen help from the farm? Specifically players who haven’t appeared yet this season for Boston? — @finleycordain

I think there is a great chance we’ll see right-hander David Sandlin at some point in September. Boston’s No. 10 ranked prospect according to MLB Pipeline was recently promoted to Triple-A and after one successful start was shifted from the rotation to the bullpen in preparation for a possible big league call-up.

Fellow pitching prospects and left-handers Payton Tolle (ranked No. 2 by MLB Pipeline) and Connelly Early (No. 6) were also recently promoted to Triple-A and could potentially factor into the equation as well.

Sandlin is uniquely well suited for the role because while he’s been effective as a starter, his high-90s fastball and hard slider combo could really play out of the bullpen. He’s also a lock to be added to the 40-man roster this winter ahead of the Rule 5 Draft, so there wouldn’t be any harm in adding him two months early.

Early and Tolle, by comparison, are not Rule 5 eligible yet so the club might prefer to hold off on adding them to the 40-man until next year.

If Sandlin were to make his debut in September or later and make an impact in the playoffs, it would be a remarkable turn of events, but also one that has become more common in recent years. Just last year the Tigers called up top pitching prospect Jackson Jobe during the final week of the season to help the club complete its improbable late-season run, and in 2020 future Tampa Bay Rays ace Shane McClanahan become one of a small handful of players to make their MLB debut during the playoffs.

Red Sox fans of a certain age might also remember another notable example of a promising player coming up and making an impact in the playoffs. David Price, who before winning a championship with the Red Sox was selected No. 1 overall by the Rays in the 2007 MLB Draft, debuted barely a year later in September 2008. He wound up being the difference when he recorded the save in the Rays’ Game 7 ALCS win over the Red Sox that October.

Do you think Roman Anthony’s contract is justified despite him only playing 50 games? And is he a sucker for not going year to year and waiting until he gets to arbitration age? Mookie Betts was a great example, look at him now. — Terry C.

I think Anthony’s eight-year, $130 million deal is a huge win for both sides. The Red Sox obviously get to lock up their latest homegrown star for essentially the next decade, and Anthony will make significantly more money in the early years of his career than he would have otherwise and is assured long-term job and financial security.

Is Anthony potentially leaving money on the table by not betting on himself and trying to reach free agency sooner? That’s a possibility. Obviously it worked out well for Betts, and Juan Soto turned down a more than $400 million offer and wound up landing nearly double that. But Anthony is also uniquely positioned to benefit from a deal like this, because since he’s still only 21 he can sign an eight-year extension and still hit free agency at age 30, when most players typically hit the open market.

So if Anthony develops into the type of superstar everyone expects, he’s going to get paid. But the good news for him, the Red Sox and everyone in New England, nobody has to worry about that for a long, long time.

Any chance the Red Sox might look to sign Nathaniel Lowe to play first base? — Davis S.

Nathaniel Lowe being designated for assignment by the Nationals this week immediately raised eyebrows, because on paper he would seem an obvious fit.

Lowe is a left-handed hitting first baseman who has won a Gold Glove, a Silver Slugger and a World Series championship. In terms of the roster fit he could seamlessly slot into Abraham Toro’s spot and form a first base platoon with Gonzalez, essentially making him another possible answer to the above reader’s question.

But while the idea of Lowe sounds great, the reality is he was cut loose by the Nationals for a reason.

Lowe has had a terrible season, batting .216 with 16 home runs, 68 RBI and a .668 OPS. His strikeout rate is up, his walk rate is down and his -0.4 wins above replacement mark is far below his typical level of production. He’s also unplayable against lefties, and while he’s hit 14 homers against righties this season, his batting average (.235) and OPS (.732) against righties aren’t meaningfully better than Gonzalez or Toro, both of whom also provide more positional versatility.

I guess anything is possible, but at this stage in the season I’d lean towards no.

The Braves and Reds played at a racetrack this year. What would be an interesting novel place for the Sox to play? — Shawn H.

This would be a logistical nightmare to pull off, but I’ve always thought it would be awesome if MLB played a Midnight Sun game in Alaska.

For those who aren’t familiar, the Midnight Sun game is a tradition that dates back decades where local amateur teams will take advantage of the 24 hours of daylight Alaska gets around the summer solstice and start a game close to midnight. The game is traditionally played on or around June 21 at Growden Memorial Park in Fairbanks and will start at 10:30 p.m., last until a little after 1 a.m., and be played entirely in daylight with no artificial lighting.

Expanding the concept to MLB obviously would have a lot of problems, and given that Fairbanks is four hours behind Eastern Standard Time there’s probably no feasible way the Red Sox could participate. Any MLB version of the game would need to start at around 10:30 p.m. Pacific Time (9:30 p.m. local) and feature a pair of west coast teams, probably the Mariners and Dodgers. Otherwise fans would have to stay up all night to watch.

But if the league could pull it off, the visual would be amazing.

As far as New England-based locations go, I remember after the NHL played their outdoor games on Lake Tahoe during the pandemic thinking it would be cool if they did something similar with the Bruins and Canadiens at the Mount Washington Hotel in New Hampshire’s White Mountains. So why not the Red Sox then? Imagine that backdrop of the Presidential Range looming in the distance beyond the outfield wall?

I don’t think there’s a better view on the east coast, so if we’re talking wildly improbable game locations, that would be my dream.