Friday Night Red Sox Lineup: Starters Play For Mayor's Cup

Some portion of the Red Sox have already started their game against the Orioles in Sarasota, but the real meat of the team will wait to play until 7:00 tonight when they take on the Twins with a chance to clinch the Mayor's Cup.

This, by the way, is your annual reminder that the Mayor's Cup is an actual physical thing. Yes, someone wasted time, money, and materials to create a trophy. Everyone involved should feel bad about this.

Anyways, in order to capture this all-important trophy, the Red Sox need just one more win over the Twins this spring. They'll have three chances to get that win, but really, wouldn't it be best to get it over with now? To that end, the Sox have a pretty good bunch of starters set to go tonight in Jet Blue Park.

Boston Red Sox

1. Jacoby Ellsbury, CF
2. Jonny Gomes, LF
3. Dustin Pedroia, 2B
4. Mike Napoli, 1B
5. Jarrod Saltamacchia, C
6. Will Middlebrooks, 3B
7. Mike Carp, DH
8. Ryan Sweeney, RF
9. Pedro Ciriaco, SS

Another day, another game with Dustin Pedroia batting third. It's not clear if John Farrell likes this configuration or is just getting a good long look at it, but it's certainly seeming more likely that Pedroia will stick there than it was a week or two ago.

Other than that, this is pretty cut and dry. Everyone is at the position you'd expect them to play in a regular season game.

Making his third start of the spring for the Red Sox will be Felix Doubront. The lefty has had some mixed results in his first two outings, but has been showing signs of progress from his inefficient beginnings in 2012. He was piling up the strikeouts in a relatively speedy fashion last time out, but when hitters actually managed to get contact, it resulted in a fair few hits. Hopefully he can eliminate those today.

The game will e broadcast on NESN, meaning we'll have a game thread later tonight for those interested.