Game 2: Peavy Vs. The Mustache

Ok, Jake, you feel good? You feel healthy? You are ready to go out and prove yourself, be competitive and win games? It starts for you now.

Jake Peavy will head to the bump for the second game of the year in Arlington while the Rangers will send up the mustachioed (kind of) hard thrower Derek Holland. Expectations aren’t terribly high for Jake at this point, which is actually a nice change from the last couple of years where we were expecting Cy Young candidate Jake Peavy to reappear at any moment. Hopefully today marks the beginning of the new Jake Peavy. A solid, effective and most importantly healthy innings eater that keeps us in games.

Every game we are learning about our new manager. Today we learn that Robin is perfectly fine shuffling things up, sending out his second lineup in 2 games:

De Aza – CF
Lillibridge – LF
Dunn – DH
Konerko – 1B
Rios – RF
Ramirez – SS
Flowers – C
Morel – 3B
Beckham – 2B

Most surprising is the instant sitting of A.J. Pierzynski in favor of Tyler Flowers. I was expecting as the season started to see the playing time shift a little heavier in the direction of Flowers from the backstop position but I also didn’t figure that trend would start until after the All-Star break. Flowers starting tonight certainly isn’t any sort of proclamation that he’s going to be seeing a straight split in time with AJ but it might, and I’m going to go ahead and let it make me feel good for the evening.

Dayan Viciedo will take a seat tonight in favor of Brent Lillibridge, a giant improvement in the outfield but a shame to let Dayan’s power go unused in Arlington.

The Sox played well yesterday, but not well enough. Should Peavy be able to go out there and keep the ball down in one of the American League’s most lively parks we should have another close game. Holland, pending the debut performances of Yu Darvish, is in my mind the Rangers most effective pitcher, so our guys definitely have their work cut out for them.