{"id":581526,"date":"2026-02-19T19:02:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T19:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/581526\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T19:02:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T19:02:16","slug":"red-sox-unveil-starting-rotation-plans-for-first-spring-training-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/581526\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Sox unveil starting rotation plans for first spring training games"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>FORT MYERS, Fla. \u2013 The Boston Red Sox will send one of the top pitching prospects in baseball to the mound for their first Grapefruit League game.<\/p>\n<p>Left-hander <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bostonherald.com\/2026\/02\/18\/red-sox-top-prospect-payton-tolle-fastball-changeup-garrett-whitlock-alex-cora-mlb-spring-training\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Payton Tolle<\/a>, who debuted last August, will start Saturday across town at the Minnesota Twins. Tyler Samaniego, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bostonherald.com\/2026\/02\/12\/red-sox-garrett-whitlock-spring-training-2026-mlb-new-york-yankees-wild-card-2025-postseason\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Garrett Whitlock<\/a> and Ryan Watson are also scheduled to pitch Saturday .<\/p>\n<p>Right-hander Brayan Bello has the ball for the home preseason opener Sunday against the Toronto Blue Jays, followed by lefty prospect Connelly Early on Monday (at Rays), Ranger Su\u00e1rez on Tuesday (home, Pirates), Johan Oviedo Wednesday (at Twins) and Garrett Crochet Thursday (home, Rays).<\/p>\n<p>Bello, Su\u00e1rez and Whitlock are among over a dozen Red Sox major and minor leaguers who are ahead of their usual preseason schedules on account of next month\u2019s World Baseball Classic. Bello will pitch for Team Dominican Republic, Whitlock is on Team USA\u2019s pitching staff, and Su\u00e1rez is one of four Red Sox who will represent Venezuela.<\/p>\n<p>Masataka Yoshida will only play in Friday\u2019s exhibition game against Northeastern University and Saturday against the Twins before leaving camp to report to Team Japan. The rest of the Red Sox WBC players won\u2019t report to their teams until March 1.<\/p>\n<p>Ahead of official spring training games, right-hander <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bostonherald.com\/2026\/02\/18\/red-sox-prospect-tyler-uberstine-starting-pitcher-first-spring-training-game-exhibition-northeastern-university-huskies-mlb\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tyler Uberstine<\/a> will start Friday\u2019s annual exhibition game against the Northeastern University Huskies.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bostonherald.com\/2026\/02\/18\/red-sox-top-prospect-payton-tolle-fastball-changeup-garrett-whitlock-alex-cora-mlb-spring-training\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Red Sox top pitching prospect throws \u2018unicorn fastball,\u2019 teammate says<\/a><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT MYERS, Fla. \u2013 The Boston Red Sox will send one of the top pitching prospects in baseball&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":581527,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2375],"tags":[5,141,48,2542,922,792,4,3973,89,2543,151,4820],"class_list":{"0":"post-581526","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boston-red-sox","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-boston","10":"tag-boston-red-sox","11":"tag-bostonredsox","12":"tag-garrett-crochet","13":"tag-masataka-yoshida","14":"tag-mlb","15":"tag-payton-tolle","16":"tag-red-sox","17":"tag-redsox","18":"tag-spring-training","19":"tag-world-baseball-classic"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116098848769441240","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/581527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}