With the trade deadline in the books
and on field action resuming tonight, it’s a good time to address a pair of odd but compelling scheduling items that will help define the final two months of the season:1) Starting with the just completed series against the Dodgers in Los Angeles, the Red Sox began a run in which they play 17 straight series against 17 different opponents to close out the season. We’ll see a couple of familiar and recent opponents like the White Sox, A’s and Blue Jays in the next
ten days, but nobody left on the schedule appears on it again.
2) And, on a somewhat related note, tonight’s game against the White Sox begins a stretch of series at Fenway Park in which seven straight opponents are not from the eastern time zone. In fact, the only east coast opponent left on the schedule this year is Cleveland, who doesn’t come in until September 22nd through the 24th.
Baked within that second point is perhaps an even more important nugget: The next five straight Fenway opponents after this series with the White Sox are against teams west of the Rockie Mountains (A’s, D-Backs, Giants, Mariners and Angels).
In other words, if the Red Sox can keep their scalding hot streak alive and win another series against the surprisingly solid White Sox, things set up pretty favorable for them to remain hot at Fenway Park right into the final week of the year.
As far as tonight goes, the pitching matchup has another small scheduling oddity. Specifically, it’s a pair of pitchers who each started a game in the series in Chicago last month, but not against each other. For the Red Sox, Patrick Sandoval made his Boston debut back on July 9th in the 2-1 win, and Davis Martin pitched for the White Sox the previous day on July 8th’s 5-0 win.
We’ll have to see which Davis Martin shows up for the White Sox tonight. He was excellent in his first nine starts of the season (to the tune of a 1.61 ERA), but has been considerably less so in his last twelve (5.46 ERA).
Lastly, before we get to the lineups, the Red Sox also made several roster moves this afternoon to balance things out after yesterday’s trade deadline. Below are three additions and two subtractions from the 26-man roster (with the third subtraction being Carlos Narvaez, who was included in the Rutschman trade).
⚾️ First Pitch: 7:10pm — Fenway Park, Boston, MA
📺 TV: NESN
📻 Radio: WEEI
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