If there's one park the Red Sox lineup probably won't mind seeing only twice this year, it's Oakland's Coliseum. Not just because of the somewhat notorious state of the facilities, but, well, they haven't seen their best games there of late. Last night's domination by Brett Anderson was just the latest installment.
Hopefully, they can show a better effort against Gio Gonzalez today. If they do, it will come from a pretty odd looking lineup:
1. J.D. Drew, RF
2. Dustin Pedroia, 2B
3. Adrian Gonzalez, 1B
4. Kevin Youkilis, DH
5. Jed Lowrie, 3B
6. Marco Scutaro, SS
7. Carl Crawford, LF
8. Jason Varitek, C
9. Jacoby Ellsbury, CF
Yes sir. That's Marco H. Scutaro batting sixth. No, Scutaro is not particularly good against Gonzalez. No, I don't understand it. Yes, his middle initial actually is H.
The A's, too, have switched up their lineup, realizing that perhaps not scoring against John Lackey was not the most encouraging of signs in the world, and beating up on Hideki Okajima should not be taken as a sign of anything in particular. At least not relating to the batters.
1. Coco Crisp, CF
2. Daric Barton, 1B
3. David DeJesus, RF
4. Hideki Matsui, DH
5. Ryan Sweeney, LF
6. Mark Ellis, 2B
7. Landon Powell, C
8. Kevin Kouzmanoff, 3B
9. Cliff Pennington, SS
The Red Sox are hoping that Clay Buchholz can do what Lackey did and use the A's lineup and park to get his year back on track. The key is to not walk five guys. Unfortunately, though, that's exactly the sort of thing Buck tends to do against these guys.
The A's will tab Gio Gonzalez, who was kind of like Clay Buchholz lite last year and is currently running around with a 100% left on base rate. Not quite sure he can keep that up...
He seems pretty unsure of himself there. . .
Go Sox!