Red Sox’ Danny Santana ‘in a good place physically’ while recovering from foot infection, Alex Cora says

Danny Santana has recently returned to full baseball activities in Fort Myers, Red Sox manager Alex Cora said Monday.

Santana, who signed a minor-league deal with the Sox last month, had been sidelined since the middle of March due to a right foot infection, which required a stay in the hospital.

“Danny started his whole baseball stuff like a week ago,” Cora said during his pregame media availability. “He’s down there in Fort Myers… He feels good. We’ve been texting a lot the last few days. He’s in a good place physically. Just going through his spring training. Hopefully, he can get some at-bats soon and see where he’s at.”

Prior to signing with Boston earlier this spring, Santana had spent the first seven years of his big-league career with the Twins, Braves, and Rangers.

Most recently with the Rangers, the 30-year-old utilityman mashed 28 home runs and collected 81 RBI while posting an .857 OPS in 2019, but struggled to the tune of a .511 OPS over 15 games last season.

Texas non-tendered and effectively made Santana a free-agent in December.

While he has proven to be inconsistent at times throughout his career, the Dominican native has also proven to be quite versatile, as he has major-league experience at every defensive position besides pitcher and catcher.

This aspect of his game, as well as the fact that he is a switch-hitter, likely made Santana appealing to the Sox. So much so that it appeared as though the 5-foot-11, 2013 pounder had the inside track on making Boston’s Opening Day roster prior to going down with that foot infection.

Now that Santana is working his way back to full strength, though, the Red Sox could consider a change in their roster construction sometime in the not so distant future.

Boston is currently carrying 14 pitchers and 12 position players on its 26-man major-league roster, but Cora seemed to leave the door open to carrying 13 pitchers and 13 position players somewhere down the line depending on how the starting rotation holds up.

“As of now, we feel comfortable with where we’re at having one extra arm, because it helps us” said the Sox skipper. “Having Garrett [Whitlock] and Matt [Andriese] that can give us multiple innings in high-leverage situations or close games is good for the staff. So we’ll talk about it. We’ll talk about it and see what we decide.”