After a 1-5 road trip to begin the second half of the season, the Boston Red Sox will look for some home cooking starting Friday when they open up a three-game series against the archrival New York Yankees.
The Red Sox will hand the ball to Brayan Bello while lefty Nestor Cortes will toe the rubber at Fenway Park for the Yankees, who enter the series 4 1/2 games ahead of Boston.
Left-handed starting pitchers have given the Red Sox trouble this season. Cortes had a strong outing earlier this month against Boston when he allowed one run on three hits and struck out eight in six innings.
Red Sox manager Alex Cora tweaked the lineup with Cortes taking the mound. Romy González, who homered off Cortes in the last matchup, will get his eighth start of the season at first base in place of Dominic Smith. Rob Refsnyder will play left field and bat second while Cora went with Jamie Westbrook over David Hamilton at second base.
First pitch between the divisional rivals is set for 7:10 p.m. ET. You can watch the game, including 90 minutes of pregame coverage, on NESN.
Here are the lineups for Friday’s Red Sox-Yankees game:
RED SOX (54-47)
Jarren Duran, CF
Rob Refsnyder, LF
Connor Wong, C
Rafael Devers, 3B
Tyler O’Neill, RF
Masataka Yoshida, DH
Romy González, 1B
Ceddane Rafaela, SS
Jamie Westbrook, 2B
Brayan Bello, RHP (10-5, 5.27 ERA)
YANKEES (60-44)
Alex Verdugo, RF
Juan Soto, LF
Aaron Judge, DH
Austin Wells, C
Gleyber Torres, 2B
Ben Rice, 1B
Anthony Volpe, SS
Trent Grisham, CF
Oswaldo Cabrera, 3B
Nestor Cortes, LHP (4-9, 3.99 ERA)
