The Red Sox have won five of their last six games, which includes Nathan Eovaldi winning the biggest game (wild card) of the year against the Yankees. He starts here and last faced the Rays in early September at Fenway Park, and the Sox won 2-1 -- he went seven scoreless innings. Boston was 13-7 behind Eovaldi at home with an ERA about one run lower than his road starts. Boston to win.

Still can't believe the Rays dropped Game 1 despite scoring five runs in the bottom of the first against Sox ace Chris Sale. It's Nate Eovaldi on the bump here for Boston and he was great in the wild-card win over the Yankees but that Rays bullpen is reset with the day off behind Drew Rasmussen, who had a 2.30 ERA in 15.2 innings vs. Boston. I'm going to parlay the Rays RL with White Sox ML so am OK with the price.

A combined 20 runs scored at Tampa Bay, a notorious pitcher’s park, should indicate how high scoring games between these teams can be. Now the series has shifted to Boston, where the average score between these AL East rivals was 14.1 runs during the regular season. In fact, you actually have to go back to June 2019 to find a matchup at Fenway Park between these teams in which the total didn't get to nine runs, as the last 16 games there since then have gotten to double digits. Take the Over.

Nate Eovaldi has been very good in the playoffs including the Wild Card game, and he has also been good in 3 out of 4 starts against the Rays this season. However, Eovaldi won’t benefit from seeing all the righties (or noncapable lefties like Gallo and Gardner) that were in the Yankees lineup. Drew Rasmussen actually faced Boston four times since being traded from the Brewers and he didn’t allow more than 1 run in any of those four games. The Red Sox were able to get all the Rays righties stacked in the lineup in Game 1 to immediately remove the lefty and face Tanner Houck. Well, the Rays won’t let that happen again today and Houck will be unavailable. The Rays also didn’t get to deploy their top relievers to stop that meltdown in the last game. I think this will be a low scoring, close game, but I think the Rays pull it out late.

For the past month-plus, the Rays have been crushing lefties and have slightly struggled against righties. In Games 1-2, they scored seven runs in 2 2/3 innings off the two Red Sox lefty starters and only four runs in the remaining 14 1/3. They can hit righties, it's just much tougher. Boston righty Nathan Eovaldi is tough. He was better at home this year and was nails in the wild card game. He gave up just one run in 14 innings with 18 strikeouts in his last two outings against the Rays. The Red Sox offense got its mojo back in Game 2 and had a 107-point higher OPS at home this season.