McAdam: Brock Holt and Eduardo Rodriguez combine to help beat back Royals

For the second straight season, second base has hardly gone according to plan for the Red Sox.

A year ago, the Red Sox expected that when Dustin Pedroia got healthy, he would again be their everyday second baseman. That was not to be, so the Sox tried a job share with Brock Holt and Eduardo Nunez at the position before adding veteran Ian Kinsler at the July 31 deadline.

This year, the position has been every bit as unsettled. Pedroia, again, was ticketed for the job, activated in time for the home opener. But that hope proved short-lived again as recurring knee woes interrupted that plan and his subsequent rehab assignments in the minors. It's now widely assumed that Pedroia's playing days are likely over.

But with both Holt and Nunez hobbled by injuries early in the Sox, somewhat out of desperation, turned to rookie Michael Chavis. Chavis was the team's most important offensive force for a month, earning him A.L. Rookie of the Month honors.

More recently, however, both first basemen -- Mitch Moreland and Steve Pearce -- headed to the IL with back issues, forcing the versatile Chavis to shift spots from second to first.

And, now, Holt and Nunez are the options at second. Again.



As the Red Sox opened a series in Kansas City Tuesday night, Holt got the start. He walked in the second, beat out an infield hit in the fifth, then doubled home the go-ahead run in the sixth.

Despite reaching base in each of his three plate appearances, Holt was lifted when his turn next came around in the eighth. Alex Cora preferred a righthanded bat to face lefty reliever Jake Diekman with two on and one out.  Nunez made good on Cora's confidence in him, smashing a hanging breaking ball deep into the seats in left for a three-run pinch-hit homer that essentially sealed the Sox 8-3 win.

Holt's season began in the most inauspicious way imaginable. On the morning of the season opener in Seattle, Holt's young son accidentally clawed his dad's eye, resulting in a scratched cornea that went undiagnosed for a week until Holt tired of trying to hit with one good eye.

When he was nearly recovered from that mishap, he suffered a shoulder impingement that forced him to start all over again on a rehab assignment. In all, the two injuries cost him about seven weeks.

Since returning from the IL, Holt is 8-for-20 and again offering the kind of pop he supplied last year, when, finally free from concussion symptoms that had dogged him for two seasons, he posted a .774 OPS and knocked in 46 runs.

Nunez has been almost inviable this season -- except for all the wrong reasons. Twice in the last week, he's made critical outs on the bases. First, he was picked off second base, and a few games later, was thrown out trying to stretch a single into a double. Both outs proved costly.

It's easy to forget the sort of jolt Nunez gave the team over the final two months of 2017 before a knee injury severely limited him in the final weeks, then wiped him out after one at-bat in the Division Series against Houston.

Last year, he was never truly recovered from the knee, and even in their marathon 18-inning loss to the Dodgers in Game 3 of the World Series, Nunez's many pratfalls on the bases and in the infield became almost slapstick humor.

This spring, he vowed he was healthy again, and he's moving far better. But that improvement hasn't translated to his play. Before the eighth-inning heroics Tuesday, he had a paltry .527 OPS. Worse, his OPS+ was 37, meaning he was providing production that was 63 percent below that of the average player.

It wasn't long ago, in fact, that with Pedroia's return pending, Nunez's roster spot appeared tenuous at best.

Now, with Pedroia home, mulling his future, Nunez has been spared.

It won't be long before Moreland is back with the team. He could be activated when the Sox return home from the current road trip. But until Pearce is back -- he's yet to begin baseball activities -- the Sox need a righthanded option at the position and Chavis seems set to assume the platoon role from the right side.

Against righties, it's assumed that Chavis will again get the majority of playing time at second, though he'll need to cut down on the strikeouts that have begun to pile up and figure out how to better handle the steady diet of fastballs up in the zone he's now seeing and often missing.

But for one night, it was like old times at second for Holt and Nunez, who split playing time a year ago and did so again Tuesday to help produce a win.