Rays-Red Sox postponed Friday, rescheduled for Monday

BOSTON -- The Rays-Red Sox game on Friday night was postponed due to persistent rain and thunderstorms in the Fenway Park area. The clubs will make the game up on Monday at 4:05 p.m. ET in what will now serve as the finale of this four-game series.

Tickets for Friday’s game will be good for admission for the rescheduled contest on Monday.

It will be a busy weekend at Fenway Park for the American League East foes, as a day-night doubleheader is on tap for Saturday.

For the prescheduled separate-admission doubleheader, Game 1 will be played at 1:10 p.m., with the nightcap at 6:10 p.m.

Garrett Whitlock will start Game 1 for the Sox, with TBD listed for Game 2. Corey Kluber, who was taken out of Boston’s rotation during the team’s last road trip, is a candidate to start that game.

The Rays will go with righty Trevor Kelley as an opener in Game 1, followed by Tyler Glasnow -- who had been scheduled to start Friday night -- in the nightcap. They are expected to call up right-hander Cooper Criswell as their 27th man for the doubleheader, and he could be an option to pitch multiple innings in the first game.

Tanner Houck (Sunday) and Brayan Bello (Monday) will round out the rotation for the Sox this weekend. The Rays are likely to stick with Taj Bradley on Sunday while their plans aren’t known yet for Monday’s series finale. The Rays could bump up ace Shane McClanahan to pitch Monday afternoon, as he would still be on five days’ rest after pitching Tuesday night at Wrigley Field.

Tampa Bay’s plans had already been thrown into disarray on Friday afternoon, when left-hander Josh Fleming felt soreness on the outside of his left elbow while playing catch. Fleming had been scheduled to pitch (as a starter or after an opener) in one of Saturday’s games, but this injury will likely send him to the 15-day injured list in the coming days. Whenever that happens, Criswell would be an option to return as Fleming’s replacement in the rotation.

Fleming felt fine after throwing his between-starts bullpen session on Wednesday, but he had been dealing with some soreness in his elbow recently and it reached the point of affecting his throwing on Friday. The Rays expect to learn more after Fleming undergoes an MRI, potentially as soon as Saturday.

Red Sox manager Alex Cora said on Friday afternoon that the Sox had scheduled the doubleheader in the offseason so they could have an off-day before their road trip to Cleveland and New York.

Instead, they got an unexpected off-night on Friday, with the game getting called roughly 70 minutes after it was scheduled to start. The Sox will play 13 games in the next 12 days, starting with Saturday’s twin bill. The Rays received an unexpected second consecutive day off, as they spent Thursday resting in Boston on the heels of a stretch with 29 games in 30 days.