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May 4, 2026; Detroit, Michigan, USA; Boston Red Sox first baseman Willson Contreras (40) in the field in the third inning against the Detroit Tigers at Comerica Park. Mandatory Credit: Rick Osentoski-Imagn Images | Rick Osentoski-Imagn Images
First, the good news. The Red Sox got a slew of cautiously optimistic injury updates this afternoon from Comerica Park in Detroit. First up, Roman Anthony:
He won’t be available these last couple of games in Detroit, but in the grand scheme of things, this is far from the worst update we could have gotten today.
Next up, Sonny Gray and Ranger Suarez:
If we fill in the rest of the blanks here and get Ranger Suarez to start Saturday and then Payton Tolle on Sunday before the off day on Monday, the Red Sox may finally be tracking towards a scenario where they can get Brayan Bello out of the rotation. (Fingers crossed!)
Unfortunately though, they won’t be able to keep him off the mound tonight. Now as you’ll probably notice in the lineups below, the Red Sox are actually not starting Brayan Bello tonight — instead going with Jovani Moran. Bello however will likely appear as the bulk guy somewhere in the game as the Red Sox play lefty / righty matchups and try to minimize the bullpen damage as much as possible. It’s a last ditch effort to try and make a Bello game competitive (good luck with that!).
In fact, the effects of his ineffectiveness are reaching all the way down to Worcester as we got this tweet from Tommy Cassell today.
In other words, even the team is preparing for another Bello bludgeoning.
If all that wasn’t bad enough, take a look at tonight’s lineup. There’s no Roman Anthony as we discussed above, but there’s also no Masataka Yoshida and Marcelo Mayer because there’s a lefty on the mound. It gets even worse when you consider that lefty is Framber Valdez and that his 3.35 ERA this year is being inflated by one bad start in Minnesota where he gave up eight runs. In the other six combined outings, he’s only given up seven earned runs in 35.1 innings.
Oh, and in addition to all of this, Garrett Whitlock and Aroldis Chapman have both pitched in back to back games, so Chad Tracy is probably going to want to stay away from them tonight if possible.
In other words, the only reason to expect a win from the Red Sox in this game is because baseball is baseball and at times it likes to be the dumbest sport ever and produce stunningly unexplainable results. Short of that happening though, the Red Sox have already kind of won in the big picture today with those injury updates, so we’ll just have to suffer through tonight.
Today’s Lineups
RED SOX | TIGERS |
|---|---|
| Jarren Duran – LF | Matt Vierling – CF |
| Willson Contreras – 1B | Kevin McGonigle – SS |
| Wilyer Abreu – RF | Jahmai Jones – DH |
| Trevor Story – SS | Dillon Dingler – C |
| Ceddanne Rafaela – CF | Riley Greene – LF |
| Andruw Monasterio – DH | Wenceel Perez – RF |
| Caleb Durbin – 3B | Spencer Torkelson – 1B |
| Connor Wong – C | Zach McKinstry – 3B |
| Isiah Kiner-Falefa – 2B | Hao-Yu Lee – 2B |
| Jovani Morán – RHP | Framber Valdez – LHP |
️ First Pitch: 6:40pm — Comerica Park, Detroit, MITV: NESN
Radio: WEEI
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