BOSTON – The Red Sox have a plan for Eduardo Rodriguez. The ace lefty will start his season on Thursday afternoon in the opener of a four-game series against the Orioles.

It will be a big boost for Boston to get Rodriguez back after he missed all of 2020 due to myocarditis.

Rodriguez would have started Opening Day if not for getting beset with dead arm in his final Spring Training start on March 22.

Mindful of what Rodriguez had been through last year, the Red Sox played it conservatively and placed Rodriguez on the 10-day injured list retroactive to March 29 to start the season.

He hasn’t had any setbacks over the last couple of weeks.

“We feel good about him,” manager Alex Cora said. “He threw a good bullpen yesterday. So if everything goes fine, that's where we're at. He's slated to pitch on Thursday.”

Cora said there won’t be a hard cap on how many pitches Rodriguez will throw in his first regular-season start since September of 2019, but 85 to 90 seems like a reasonable guess.

“We'll take care of him, but there's not like a hard number that we have. We do believe that he's ready to go deep into the game,” Cora said. “That's the most important thing. If it was something that's going to be short, he wasn't ready to go 5 or 6, we'd probably think about the decision, but we do believe he can go deep into the game.”

With Rodriguez coming back, Boston’s No. 7 prospect Tanner Houck, who turned in a solid start on Saturday, will be available out of the bullpen for Tuesday night’s game against the Rays.

Cora wouldn’t commit to whether Houck will get optioned back to the alternate site once Rodriguez gets activated, but it seems logical.

'Mr. Versatility' ‘happy’ to make history
It turns out that the super-utility bench player is pretty much becoming an everyday player for Cora and the Red Sox.

Tuesday marked the fifth day of the season for the Red Sox, and the fifth day that Marwin Gonzalez was in the starting lineup.

In fact, Gonzalez made history on Monday night when he became the first MLB player to start the first four games of a season at four different positions. Gonzalez played left field, second base, third base and first base in those four games, before making another start at first on Tuesday.

“Oh, that makes me happy,” Gonzalez said. “I didn’t know until after the game [about the record] when I checked my phone and I had a few texts from my friends telling me that. I’m just happy, man. I’m just happy that I can contribute to the team and that I can help the team at any position Alex wants me to play that day. I hope I can keep doing that.”

How many gloves does Gonzalez have?

“Well, I have a lot of gloves. I have, I would say, probably like eight gloves,” said Gonzalez. “My gamers are only four, but I have one for practice, and the other gloves are just like a new glove I’m trying to break in as an emergency glove for the future. But, yeah, I have many gloves in my locker.”

Lineup news
When rookie first baseman Bobby Dalbec (0-for-10 this season) got Monday off, it was expected to be just a one-day thing.

However, Cora made it a two-day thing when Dalbec was again not in the lineup against Rays ace Tyler Glasnow.

“I mean he didn't swing the bat well at the end of Spring Training after he got hit [by a pitch],” Cora said. “And he feels like there's a few things that he's working on, and he needs to do adjustment wise. Maybe we'll use him late in game and tomorrow he'll be back at first base.”

Kiké Hernández, who has started the season 2-for-15 as Boston’s leadoff hitter, got his first night off on Tuesday. Christian Arroyo took over both at leadoff and at second base.

“Christian, he swung the bat well in Spring Training. I don’t want to change too much of our structure lineup-wise. I still want to keep it the way it is,” Cora said.