Two evening games in a row? What is this, the regular season?<\/p>\n
We got another nightcap for you guys as the Athletics play host yet again, this time to the Chicago Cubs. Both teams are just days away from the beginning of their regular season campaigns and are fine tuning their rosters and alignments. The Cubs tonight are actually split up, with half coming to Mesa to take on the A\u2019s and the other half playing host to the Reds on the other side of town. These games still technically don\u2019t matter, but they\u2019re starting to have more weight to them the closer Opening Day comes, for both of these squads.<\/p>\n
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For the Athletics on the mound tonight they\u2019ll be going with the newly-named Opening Night starter in Luis Severino. The right-hander is set to make his final exhibition appearance, which includes both spring with the A\u2019s and his time playing in the World Baseball Classic with Team Dominican Republic. Sevy is looking to put the finishing touches on his ramp up for the regular season and we\u2019ll be hoping to see some zeros on the scoreboard tonight.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s your A\u2019s lineup for Friday night\u2019s contest:<\/p>\n
The A\u2019s are mixing up the lineup a little bit but not too much. We have a new leadoff man tonight in Lawrence Butler, who will be playing right field tonight. That\u2019s a huge update as the final step in Butler\u2019s rehab from patellar tendon surgery is manning the outfield grass. The club is also apparently anxious to get him as many plate appearances as possible after his abbreviated camp.<\/p>\n
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The rest of the top half of the lineup looks like how you\u2019d expect, with Kurtz and Langeliers again batting back-to-back near the top of the order. The interesting part of tonight\u2019s lineup is near the bottom half of the lineup card though. We\u2019ll be getting to see Jeff McNeil log some time on the grass himself as he slides from second base to center field, displacing Denzel Clarke from the starting nine. And taking McNeil\u2019s spot at the keystone is Andy Ibanez, who is likely to break camp with the club. Could this be an alignment that the A\u2019s actually go to if Clarke\u2019s bat isn\u2019t up to snuff?<\/p>\n
The Cubbies will send right-handed veteran Jameson Taillon to the mound themselves for what\u2019ll be his own final spring tune up. The righty has had a tough camp so far but spring stats don\u2019t matter. Still, it\u2019d be nice to rough him up and get another win for our guys in Green & Gold.<\/p>\n
The Chicago lineup tonight shakes out like this:<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll be seeing a mix of the Cubs\u2019 regulars as well as backups. Shouldn\u2019t be too difficult of an assignment for Severino but these guys are getting ready for the season themselves. Everyone wants to hit the ground running and that starts in these games over the final week.<\/p>\n
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Predictions? A win? A loss? A Nick Kurtz home run? Doens\u2019t matter just yet but let\u2019s still have fun with it on a great Friday night. Let\u2019s go A\u2019s!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two evening games in a row? What is this, the regular season? We got another nightcap for you…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":634448,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[3806,146,537,5,24,51,14905,5173,1332,4810,1327,23022,4,459,536,1949],"class_list":["post-634447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-andy-ibanez","tag-arizona","tag-athletics","tag-baseball","tag-chicago-cubs","tag-cleveland-guardians","tag-denzel-clarke","tag-jameson-taillon","tag-jeff-mcneil","tag-lawrence-butler","tag-luis-severino","tag-mesa","tag-mlb","tag-nick-kurtz","tag-reds","tag-the-athletics"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116264255253577915","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634447","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=634447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}