Tuesday night baseball and we will see the Boston Red Sox take on the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field in Tampa. First pitch is scheduled for a 7:10 PM (Eastern) start time and the game will be televised on MLB Network. Current Betting Odds, according to Sportsbook.ag, have Boston listed as the favorite.
Current Odds
Boston -123
Tampa Bay +113
Over/ Under: 8 O -120
Analysis: The Boston Red Sox have taken six of the first seven meetings with the Tampa Bay Rays this season, but it hasn’t always been easy. Boston ran up a 6-0 advantage before an out was recorded in Monday’s series opener but squandered a pair of leads before finally earning a 10-8 win in 14 innings. Boston has won three games in a row and extended its lead in the American League East to two games over the New York Yankees while pushing the Rays five back. Dustin Pedroia is batting .321 during a 14-game hitting streak, but he's 1 for 12 against Hernandez. David Ortiz is 7 for 19 with a homer versus the right-hander. Jon Lester has not been at his best of late, going 0-2 with a 5.68 ERA over his last four starts. Most important for Boston’s needs on Tuesday, the left-hander has completed seven innings only once in that span. Lester has gone seven frames in each of his two starts against Tampa Bay this season, surrendering a total of three runs while striking out 10 and walking one.
Tampa Bay has averaged 7.7 runs over the last three games but has lost the last two, yielding 10 runs in each of those defeats. Several key Tampa hitters have struggled vs Lester, with Ben Zobrist striking out 17 times against him and Evan Longoria 16 times. Zobrist is hitting .190 against Lester and Longoria .200. That's at least better than Kelly Johnson, who is 0 for 12, and Luke Scott, 0 for 11. After using a ton of pitchers in last night's game, the Ray could use a starter to go deep, but Hernandez is not the best bet on the Rays staff to go deep into the game, having made one start of more than six innings in his last nine turns. He was knocked around for four runs and 10 hits in 5 1/3 frames to suffer a loss at Detroit on Thursday. Hernandez has missed the Red Sox in each of the two previous series this season and has struggled to 2-4 with a 3.63 ERA in nine career games (seven starts) against Boston.
Pick: Last night I had the Under and that went by the wayside in the first inning. I knew that both offenses were hot, but felt that the pitching would overcome it. Boy was I wrong. Theses offenses are extremely hot and I expect it to continue to night vs weaker pitching than was on the mound last night. John Lester takes the hill for the Sox and he has struggled in his last 3 starts, with a 5.12 ERA over that stretch and he has a 4.11 ERA on the road, with his road starts averaging 10.12 rpg. He will be facing a Rays team that absolutely crushes left-handed pitching, especially of late. On the year the Rays have hit .285 and scored 5.51 rp/9 off of lefties, while at home vs southpaws they have hit .295 and have scored 5.81 rp/9. Now get this . In their last 10 games the Rays have hit lefties at a .386 clip and have scored 11.05 rp/9 off of them. Wow. For the Sox, they like facing righties, scoring 6.26 rp/9 off of them on the road and 8.46 rp/9 off of them in their last 10 games overall. In their last 10 games overall the Sox have scored 7.2 rpg, while Tampa has scored 5.1 rpg and both teams have allowed 4+ rpg over the same stretch as well. This game could be rated higher, because 97% of the stats point towards double digit runs and the way stats have lied this year it scares me a bit that the numbers so overwhelmingly say over. We shall see.
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