The Red Sox, recently allergic to easy wins, look to stretch their winning streak to three against the Twins tonight behind Nick Pivetta (7:10 p.m., NESN).
Tonight marks the likely first game of the definitive post-Matt Barnes-as-certain-closer era after two straight blowups have continued Barnes’s difficult second half and probably prompted a perhaps temporary, but perhaps permanent, shuffling of the deck. There are no more games to give away in the name of pride or stubbornness, and Garrett Whitlock (presumably) should help the Sox lock down the end of games better than Barnes has done. Or maybe it’s Hirokazu Sawamura.