Red Sox at Twins lineup: Music to our ears

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH baseball back. Sort of. The Red Sox and Twins play today (1:05 pm ET) in their shared Florida home, and there’s no television broadcast, but you can listen to the game if you want to feel yourself ascend to the astral plane of happiness on this last day of the most decrepit February in memory and, hopefully, going forward. Let’s not do that again.

Speaking of “let’s not do that again”—the 2020 Red Sox regular season. That was bad. The 2021 preseason will start the same way that one did, with a Nathan Eovaldi start, but the similarities hopefully end there. The Red Sox are no longer a team flailing to get under the luxury tax; the are a team with the luxury of financial flexibility and an up-and-coming roster of prospects and draft picks who should make the team good enough that, one hopes, they eventually flex their financial might to compete for a title or two.

But that day is a ways off, and 2018 is now sufficiently far enough in the rearview mirror for even the Sox fans most scarred at the dismantling of that title team (like me) that they are starting to look forward to the puppies and rainbows and all that jazz on the horizon. For the first time in what seems like an eternity, and maybe just in the nick of time, the Red Sox will be just another team with low expectations. It could be just what the doctor ordered.

At least to start, the Sox, again under Alex Cora, are running out a pretty starter-friendly lineup. They probably won’t play too much, but we get our first looks at Kiké Hernández and Hunter Renfroe, a nice longer look at Jarren Duran, and we get a cleanup peek at our beefy boy Rafael Devers. “Look” might not be the right word for a radio-only game, but the stats tomorrow will be the same ones and zeroes as ever.

Red Sox lineup

1. Kiké Hernández, SS

2. Jarren Duran, CF

3. Hunter Renfroe, RF

4. Rafael Devers, 3B

5. Christian Vázquez, C

6. Bobby Dalbec, 1B

7. Christian Arroyo, 2B

8. Michael Chavis, DH

9. Michael Gettys, LF

P: Nathan Eovaldi, RHP

Twins lineup

1. Max Kepler, RF

2. Mitch Garver, C

3. Jorge Polanco, 2B

4. Miguel Sanó, 1B

5. Byron Buxton, CF

6. Alex Kirilloff, LF

7. Willians Astudillo, 3B

8. J.T. Riddle, SS

9. Caleb Hamilton, DH

P: Devin Smeltzer, LHP