Boston Red Sox vs Las Vegas Athletics Betting Picks

We took Boston's number Saturday afternoon, and the Athletics answered right back, riding two solo homers and two two-run doubles to a 7-3 win that snapped their own nine-game skid. That result matters here, because the Red Sox still haven't named a starter for today's series finale, a blank spot in the equation that the market is pricing over. J.T. Ginn takes the ball for the Athletics instead, and the version of him over the last two months has been stingy: three earned runs or fewer in seven of his last eight starts. My mathematical model puts this one closer to 36-64, a tighter split than the price on the board reflects. The Athletics fit their own pattern today too, a big underdog off a win, coming off a game where they were also priced as a big underdog. Boston remains one of the better clubs in the league, but Saturday is proof the number can move fast against a team that's earned every bit of its price. The market has mispriced this one. At these odds, the Athletics are the play this afternoon.

The last team to beat Boston was Oakland's own Gage Jump, who worked six shutout innings for a 4-3 win at Fenway twelve days ago. Everything has flipped since. The Red Sox have won nine straight, capped by a 13-1 rout of these same Athletics yesterday, and Jump has been hit for six earned runs in two of his last three starts, an ERA now at 4.59 with a WHIP pushing 1.47. Jake Bennett goes for Boston off a strong turn in Los Angeles, carrying a 2.90 ERA and a 1.009 WHIP. The Athletics bring the second-worst team ERA in baseball into this one, without Nick Kurtz, Brent Rooker, Zack Gelof and Shea Langeliers, and they haven't won since that Jump start. Boston is also live in a spot that has long paid for home teams coming off a blowout win in a rematch. I took a shot on the A's Thursday in Cincinnati, and it got away late. Back the Red Sox this afternoon.

The Athletics arrive at Fenway on a five-game road skid and a 45-70 record that isn't hiding anything, and Jack Perkins doesn't offer much cover: a 6.72 ERA and 1.40 WHIP that rank him near the bottom of full-time starters in baseball. Payton Tolle counters for Boston with a 3.30 ERA and a strikeout rate that keeps climbing, part of a Red Sox staff that ranks second in the American League in ERA. We tried to fade this Boston lineup Thursday with a White Sox flyer, and it cost us in a wild one, 12-11, the kind of result that says more about how hard Boston is playing right now than about any one pitcher on the mound. Boston sits at 63-51 and has already taken three of four in this season series, and Perkins walking this lineup even a handful of times turns tonight into exactly the kind of game the Athletics can't survive right now. Boston is the play tonight.