Red Sox at Blue Jays lineups: All smiles for a matinee

The Red Sox, fresh off a revitalizing victory, finish their series against the Blue Jays this afternoon behind the ascendant Garrett Whitlock (3:07 p.m., NESN).

It won’t be easy. They’ll face Alek Manoah, one of the game’s rising stars, who sports an ERA of 2.00 flat and is just generally a bad, bad man on the mound. Of course, the same is true of Whitlock, whose ERA is 0.66, which is just insane. Baseball can and will surprise you, but I would not expect a ton of runs today, especially because Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is getting the afternoon off. We’ll take it!

We’ll also take Whitlock, who, with the news Tanner Houck is not set to start in the next few days, might be a permanent addition to the rotation. Unfortunately for Whitlock, the Sox are also resting some big bats—specifically, those of Xander Bogaerts and J.D. Martinez. Which means Travis Shaw is the DH. Do with that what you will.

Let’s win another dang game, shall we?