This coming Sunday night, April 4th, the Boston Red Sox will open their regular season at Fenway against their most hated rivals, the New York Yankees.  The game will start at 8:05 p.m. on Sunday on ESPN.  The projected duel of pitchers in this Opening Day game is Josh Beckett squaring off against Yankees ace C.C. Sabathia.

The Red Sox opening day lineup looks a little different than last year’s regular starting lineup, with a new addition at third base in Adrian Beltre, a new addition in centerfield in Mike Cameron, and a new shortstop in Marco Scutaro.  It is expected that there will be a little more buzz than there normally is around this Yankees-Red Sox matchup, since this is the first game of the Yankees’ title defense, and it just happens to be against their hated rivals from Boston.

There is especially a lot of buzz around C.C. Sabathia, the Yankees’ opening day starting pitcher, who is expected to perform just as exceptionally this coming season as he did last season, helping the Yankees capture their 27^th World Series title.  When it comes to the buzz surrounding Sunday night’s game, C.C. embraced this buzz.  “It’s going to be exciting. It’s always exciting when you’re going to Boston. I’m definitely going to have to keep my emotions in check and stay calm, and throw strikes.”

The Red Sox also have high hopes for the 2010 season, seeing as 2009 ended sourly for them in losing to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in the ALDS in four games.  With the addition of John Lackey, a proven big game pitcher, who happened to pitch last for the Angels, as well as having Josh Beckett, Jon Lester, Clay Buchholz and Tim Wakefield in the starting rotation, the Red Sox are once again going to rely heavily on their starting pitching in hopes of having a strong rotation as in past years.

“We have the pitching staff that I don’t think any other team has,” said Adrian Beltre, the new starting third baseman for the Red Sox.  “We have six starters that can be a No. 1 or No. 2 for any other team, and having the defense behind it makes sense. If you have a great pitching staff and put a good defense behind it, you don’t need to score 15 runs to win. Two or three might do it. So I’m excited about that. Hopefully we can do our part and put all that together and turn that into a championship.”  Red Sox G.M. Theo Epstein also weighed in on the heavy expectations that are on the starting rotation this season.

“On paper, I think we have a chance to be as solid a [Nos.] 1-5 pitching staff as we’ve been here and a chance to be pretty top-heavy, too, if things go right,” Epstein chimed in.  “You’ll have guys vying to be called the No. 1 on this staff — some pretty talented pitchers. It’s all theoretical this time of year. It doesn’t really matter how it looks on paper until we go out and do it.”  All that is certain that there is lots of buzz about this game between the Yankees and Red Sox, as it will be the official first game of the 2010 MLB season.  There are high expectations for both of these teams as they prepare to clash at Fenway Park on Sunday night.

New York Yankees

Full 25-man roster | Depth chart

Boston Red Sox

Full 25-man roster | Depth chart

The above information was gathered from smugmug.com, boston.redsox.mlb.com, and newyork.yankees.mlb.com.