Red Sox at Orioles lineup: Pedroia, Benintendi sit; also, some runs would be nice

Can we call innings one through nine “regulation time” despite the fact they are not timed? If so, the Red Sox have scored one run in the last 27 innings of regulation time. That is bad, and it is a problem that supersedes whatever malice you choose to read into Manny Machado’s poor feet-first slide into Dustin Pedroia last night, and whatever payback you decide is warranted. The Sox are much better served working to wake up their bats than threatening to throw down in Poe-town, even — especially — with Pedroia missing today’s game (7:05 p.m., NESN) as a result.

The good news is that might just work itself out on its own. Not for nothing, the Sox got blistered by Francisco Liriano, Marco Estrada and Dylan Bundy on their best days. It happens, but it usually doesn’t happen three days in a row, and rarely still a fourth no matter who’s pitching, but especially not when it’s Jayson Aquino, a 24-year old lefty groundballer making his major league debut. If the Sox have simply been flailing away against superior pitchers and are not somehow collectively flawed (they are not), they should fare much better today (and might not).

Certainly now would be the ideal time to release the hounds at the plate, so to speak. They’ll need all the runs they can get. Steven Wright has an 8.36 ERA through three starts this year, with two additional unearned runs piled atop that. Now he’s facing a team that hits home runs by the Poe-load. Which I guess is a lot, but I’m not sure, as it’s an inside-Baltimore thing that I just made up.

Xander Bogaerts is back in the starting lineup, hitting leadoff in Pedey’s place and Andrew Benintendi is sitting because life isn’t fair and he has a regular day off. Jackie Bradley Jr. makes a big jump to the second spot in the batting order. Here’s the full fight card: