The Mariners are closing in on the Red Sox in the wild card standings, which can be remedied with a win tonight.
The Red Sox look to put the Mariners further in the rearview mirror tonight behind Nathan Eovaldi at T-Mobile Park (10:10 p.m., NESN, MLBN out-of-network).
So FanGraphs has the wild card as a three team race between the Rays, Yankees and Sox, which is good and all, but the Mariners are like 2.5 back of Boston and when you play each other that stuff changes fast. The point being the Sox better win with their putative Cy Young Award candidate on the mound. He won’t win the Cy, but if Eovaldi can do his part to keep the Yankees out of the playoffs, that’s even better. (He played for them. He knows.)
The Sox put out something close to the A lineup tonight, with Kyle Schwarber getting the night off between the bigs dogs at the corner and DH positions. Bobby Bombs Dalbec is in to make the starter wish he was never born, and we support this. Here are the full lineups: