Friday Red Sox Lineups: More Of The Same

Another day, another Lefty for the Red Sox, who are in for their third straight southpaw on the mound in Aaron Laffey.

While the Red Sox found themselves shut down for most of Thursday night's game by Jose Quintana, there was never any real question of whether or not the lineup was going to see changes. This is, for the most part, a team of heavy splits, after all. An 0-for from the likes of Kelly Shoppach against a lefty isn't going to have him replaced in the lineup by Jarrod Saltalamacchia, who just does not swing the bat terribly well from the right side of the plate.

In fact, tonight it's actually gotten him a small promotion. We'd called attention in recent days to the fact that Kelly Shoppach and his .875 OPS was batting consistently behind Mike Aviles and his .698 mark. While Aviles technically is outpacing Shoppach against southpaws this season, Shoppach is the more dangerous of the two lefty-mashers when given his favored matchup, making the ordering a bit odd. Today that's been set to rights, with Shoppach batting seventh and Aviles hitting eighth.

Otherwise, though, it's just more of the same for Boston.

Toronto, on the other hand, are still trying to adjust to injury after injury. Jose Bautista is out with a wrist injury, Brett Lawrie is day-to-day (but today is seemingly not that day), and the entire pitching staff is apparently in the hospital. No, we're not getting the Jays' best today. Hopefully the Sox can take advantage.