Red Sox at Yankees lineup: Will you like David Price when he’s angry?

The Red Sox (32-26) try to earn a series victory over the first-place Yankees (33-23) tonight at Yankee Stadium (7:05 p.m., NESN, ESPN) behind the mercurial David Price (3.00 ERA).

So... this isn’t about me, and you might not care, but it’s a matter of historical record that I reflexively take the athlete’s side in a player/reporter beef. I have defended Price before, but yelling at good reporters in person because you’re mad online is a misstep at every level, especially when the few of your remaining fans already wanted you to cut the shit. How many times does this have to happen before Price realizes that these things only happen to him because he lets them? It’s one thing to get mad online sometimes. It’s another thing to be mad online all the time, even when you’re offline. Part of it is likely the crazy wiring of pitchers. Another part of it is pride. The last part of it is foolishness.

If it makes him pitch well, forget I said all of this, but it’s hard not to see Price’s overblown reactions to coverage into which he opted by signing with the Sox as manifestations of disappointment in his decreasing skill-set. In English, he’s mad because he’s getting old and can’t perform as well as he once did. It’s easy to say “Get over, it! Move on!,” especially as a writer, because unlike baseball players, our careers do not almost always end by the age of 40. (They are like baseball careers in, however, in that they can go on forever and never really get started.) So I won’t say it. Which means I did say it, and I’m getting it both ways. I learned that one from our boy David. It’s a neat trick for as long as it works, but it’s enough talking that you’re bound to screw it up eventually. Maybe Price needs some sort of intermediary between him and the media to help him out. A translator, if you will. Until he has one, he’s just going to sound like a butthead. More translators in baseball, not fewer!

The good part is that unlike writers or translators, pitchers can let their play do the talking, and tonight Price will try to do just that and put an already long week behind him. He’ll be faced by Michael Pineda (3.76 ERA), who started out the season on fire but has cooled down a bit. Here are the full lineups: