Red Sox vs. Angels lineups: It’s a goat rodeo, at long last

The best player in baseball makes his way to Fenway Park tonight as Mike Trout and the Angels square off with Nick Pivetta and the Red Sox (7:10 p.m., NESN, MLBN out-of-network).

After a fast start for them, the Angels are back in the cellar, fixing to waste another Trout MVP year, but it’s even worse, as they have Shohei Ohtani doing absolutely insane things alongside him this year, to little avail. They’ll face Pivetta tonight, and hopefully for us this isn’t the night Pivetta’s 5+ walks per nine come back to bite him, or the .244 BABIP, or “being Nick Pivetta.” The good news is Angels suckitude is way stronger than normal regression, and this should lean in Boston’s favor.

Michael Chavis is back at leadoff after another successful start there, and the DH rotation continues, with Rafael Devers getting a reprieve at third for the night but batting fifth nonetheless, with Marwin Gonzalez taking his place and batting seventh.

The Angels took their sweet time with their lineups, and I blame the ghost of Mike Scioscia. They’ll start Griffin Canning, who, fun fact, went to the same high school as Carson Palmer, Klay Thompson (and dad, and brother) and Kristen Cavallari. I know, I know: doooooonnnn’t carrrrrre. But I had to write something while spinning my wheels for the Angels’s lineup to drop. They don’t have Albert Pujols any more, I know that. Or Scioscia, for that matter, who is still very much alive, despite the obvious presence of his ghost in this delay. Again, spinning my wheels. I just wanna eat dinner.

Okay I ate dinner and two things happened: one, my wife killed or; two I realized Joe Maddon is the Angels’s manager. Now this all makes sense. Anyhow the lineup coming out was not one of the things that happened, likely because Maddon is a clown. Game’s in 57 minutes now. Clowns needs a lot of makeup. Also maybe they were seeing if Anthony Rendon was ready to return from injury, which apparently he was. Whatever.