This is tonight’s lineup for the Boston Red Sox against the New York Yankees:
- Daniel Nava LF
- Ryan Kalish CF
- David Ortiz DH
- Cody Ross RF
- Adrian Gonzalez 1B
- Jarrod Saltalamacchia C
- Mauro Gomez 3B
- Mike Aviles SS
- Nick Punto 2B
I’m sorry, say what you will about Bobby Valentine but that lineup is simply not his fault. Who is Mauro Gomez? I write a baseball blog and I have never heard of Mauro Gomez. The Boston Red Sox have Cody Ross hitting cleanup. I realize that the Red Sox have millions and millions of dollars worth of valuable players sitting on the DL, but a team as prominent as the Sox with the payroll of the Sox has to do better than this. They’ve been playing better lately but they are still 7.5 games out of first place and barely above .500.
A ton has been written about Boston and I’m not about to hash it all out here. In fact, I didn’t even set out to write a whole post. I just wanted to draw attention to tonight’s Sox lineup. It has Adrian Gonzalez batting fifth behind Cody Ross. It has Daniel Nava leading off. It has Ryan Kalish batting second. It has exactly one guy (Ortiz) batting where he was supposed to be when this roster was put together. It has some guy named Mauro Gomez playing third base.
-Max Frankel
