A lingering left shoulder injury will keep Red Sox third baseman Rafael Devers from participating in next week’s All-Star Game in Texas.
Sox manager Alex Cora said the team met Tuesday with Devers and made the decision. Cora described the ailment as AC joint soreness. Devers will miss the chance to make his third All-Star Game appearance, but will use the four-day break to recover before the Sox start the second-half of the season next Friday on the road against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
“Obviously he’s been grinding through a few things, especially his left shoulder,” Cora said. “So, as a group, we believe this will be a good time for him to get some rest and take care of it. So he’s not going to participate.”
Going into Tuesday’s matchup at home against the Oakland Athletics, Devers had played 77 of the Sox’s 89 games, third-most on the team. Cora said the league understood the decision to keep him out of all-star festivities.
“It’s been going on for a while, of course, and they understood,” Cora said.
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With a .293/.378/.593 slash line, Devers has been the fulcrum of the Sox offense this season. His 21 homers are fifth in the American League and his .971 OPS is fourth.
Over the past 13 games, Devers is hitting .388 with seven homers and 17 RBIs. Cora credited the Sox medical staff, as well as Devers’s individual accountability to his recovery routine, to Devers’s performance despite the nagging injury.
“They do an amazing job with him during the week,” Cora said. “I think Raffy has learned how to be efficient with his work and staying healthy.”
With the Sox sitting in third place in the AL East, Cora said the team and Devers were looking beyond the break and toward what the Sox could do the rest of the year.
“Obviously, talking to him, we all believe there’s more here,” Cora said. “We’re shooting for something bigger than the All-Star Game and for him to be healthy is the most important thing.”
Setting the rotation
The Sox are still mapping out their rotation coming out of the all-star break, keeping in mind that many of the arms they’re relying on are pitching more innings than they have in their careers.
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Tanner Houck is set to pitch in Thursday’s series finale against Oakland before going to Texas for the all-star game.
“We have to decide when we’ll use him in the next couple days and we’ll map it out.
Houck has already thrown a career-high 111 innings. Kutter Crawford, who threw a career-high 129⅓ innings in 31 appearances (23 starts) last season, is at 105⅔ innings over 18 starts this season.
“That’s something that is on our mind,” Cora said. “The schedule — just mapping it out, just looking at it — is going to give us extra days.”
Cora said the strategy to close out the first half was to have the team’s best arms available.
Righthander Josh Winckowski will go to the bullpen Wednesday and Cora said the Sox will decide from there whether Friday will be a bullpen day.
The Sox called up Trey Wingenter after making a minor-league trade last Saturday to acquire the 30-year-old righthander from the Detroit Tigers. Lefthander Cam Booser was optioned Monday to Triple-A Worcester to make room on the roster.
Friday’s starter is still up in the air.
“We just want our best arms available the whole week,” Cora said. “That’s the most important thing. We understand where we’re at and obviously today you see it, what we’re trying to accomplish. We’re trying to put our best roster every single night for us to try to win a ballgame, which is awesome.”
Making the rounds
Cora is starting to sense the mood around the team shifting when he moves through the city. And he can especially sense it when he looks at his bar tab.
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“I can tell you how I feel that,” Cora said, knowing the punchline was around the corner. “The last two years, I paid [for] a lot of drinks when I went to dinner and this year, I’m not paying [for] too many. So it’s been fun.”
The Sox have surged since June, creating a buzz that’s been missing for at least two years with the possibility of returning to the playoffs for the first time since 2021.
“I do believe people like the brand of baseball we’re playing,” Cora said. “We’re in a good place, we’re playing good baseball, we’ve just got to keep improving.”
Home wreckers
Despite their overall success, the Sox are still a sub-.500 team at home. The Sox came into last night’s game vs. the A’s with a 20-23 record at Fenway this season. They haven’t had a winning home record since 2022. “That’s something we’ve been talking about for a while,” Cora said. “If we’re really good at home, we’ve got a pretty good chance of playing meaningful games in October. We’ve been better lately. Honestly, if I knew what was going on, we’d attack it, right? The only thing we can do is show up every day and try to make it better.” . . . Triston Casas, out since April with a left rib strain, took 30 dry swings Monday, Cora said. He came away with some soreness, but nothing serious and didn’t swing again Tuesday. Cora was hopeful Casas might progress to working off the tee later in the week and eventually soft toss. Vaughn Grissom (out since June 2 with a right hamstring strain, hit, ran and took grounders pregame . . . The Sox recalled infielder/outfielder Jamie Westbrook from Triple-A Worcester, optioned infielder/outfielder Enmanuel Valdez to Worcester and designated righthanded pitcher Naoyuki Uwasawa for assignment.
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Julian Benbow can be reached at julian.benbow@globe.com.