Tuesday lineups and notes (Randy Johnson vs Chris Carpenter)

Greetings from the Busch Stadium press box. Should be a great pitchers duel tonight as former Cy Young Award winners Randy Johnson and Chris Carpenter toe the rubber for their respective clubs. Its a beautiful day for baseball and I get excited coming to the park on days like today.

First, the lineups:

Giants (41-34)

Aaron Rowand CF
Randy Winn LF
Pablo Sandoval 3B
Bengie Molina C
Nate Schierholtz RF
Edgar Renteria SS
Travis Ishikawa 1B
Juan Uribe 2B
Randy Johnson P

Cardinals (41-37)

Brendan Ryan SS
Mark DeRosa 3B
Albert Pujols 1B
Ryan Ludwick RF
Yadier Molina C
Rick Ankiel CF
Tyler Greene 2B
Chris Carpenter P
Joe Thurston LF

Cardinals Notes:

*Per the lineups above, Joe Thurston is starting in LF and Mark DeRosa at 3B. Tony La Russa was asked about why not play Thurston at 3B and DeRosa in left, and his response was that DeRosa would be playing most of the time at third so he wanted him to concentrate on that.

*The same can be said about Brendan Ryan playing SS and Tyler Greene playing 2B instead of what seems to make more sense, switching them and having Ryan play 2B and Greene play at short. La Russa said that Ryan would be getting most of the playing time at SS if he stays healthy and he didn't want to mess with him playing other spots.

*Colby Rasmus was available to play but not in the lineup with the lefty Johnson on the hill. Tony hinted that he would start tomorrow. Yadier Molina was back in the lineup after missing two games because of a brusied thigh. I went into more detail on both of these in a story for stlcardinals.com that should be posted shortly.

Thats all for now, heading down to get some grub. Enjoy the game. Pitching matchups like these don't come around often.

-B.J. Rains