The Red Sox have finally left Seattle and I feel a full year older despite having not watched many of the games. I can only imagine how everyone else feels, leastwise the Sox, but at least they get to play somewhere else tonight. That place is Oakland, at 10 p.m., where David Price will make his season debut, in which he will try to pull the Sox out of a small but real funk. Good thing he’s got “all the cards,” right? (Though be wary when the other team has “A” on their hats.)
The A’s are forever and forever and forever the A’s, somewhere on the middling-to-quite good scale, but at least this team has Khris Davis, who hits .247 every year, kicks ass 24/7 and presents a tough matchup for Price, who can be taken deep even on his best days. The A’s also have Matt Chapman, of whom I haven’t seen much but from everything I can tell is basically Scott Rolen incarnate, which is good. Add likeable dude Stephen Piscotty and forever prospect Jurickson Profar and I daresay this version of the Billy Beane experiment is a bit zestier than normal, except they’re starting someone named Aaron Brooks who’s not the former NFL quarterback, so maybe not.
On the Red Sox side, apparently Dave Dombrowski reads the lineup posts, because just yesterday I said Mookie Betts should bat leadoff even with Andrew Benintendi in the lineup, and tonight Betts will do just that, despite what Alex Cora said over the offseason about Beni batting first. I win! I am the new manager of the Sox. To prove it, here are today’s lineups:
Game 5 at A’s
Lineup spot | Red Sox | A's |
---|---|---|
Lineup spot | Red Sox | A's |
1 | Mookie Betts, RF | Marcus Semien, SS |
2 | Andrew Benintendi, LF | Matt Chapman, 3B |
3 | Rafael Devers, 3B | Stephen Piscotty, RF |
4 | J.D. Martinez, DH | Khris Davis, DH |
5 | Xander Bogaerts, SS | Mark Canha, 1B |
6 | Mitch Moreland, 1B | Chad Pinder, LF |
7 | Eduardo Núñez, 2B | Jurickson Profar, 2B |
8 | Jackie Bradley Jr., CF | Ramon Laureano, CF |
9 | Christian Vázquez, C | Nick Hundley, C |
SP | David Price, LHP | Aaron Brooks, RHP |
GAMES WITHOUT A LINEUP MISTAKE (including today): 0. A previous version of this post, and the original tweet for the story, said the Sox were playing the Mariners. Dammit!