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Rays will face Red Sox in division series

Rays will face Red Sox in division series

ST. PETERSBURG — The Red Sox are coming.

After beating the Yankees 6-2 in Tuesday’s American League wild-card game at Fenway Park, the Red Sox earned a trip to Tropicana Field to face the Rays in the best-of-five division series that opens Thursday.

Lefty Eduardo Rodriguez is expected to start for Boston in Game 1 against Rays lefty Shane McClanahan.

“We’ve just got to be ready to face a great baseball team,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said. “Coming into the season, everybody talked about (the Rays) being the best team in the big leagues, and we have a huge challenge. But we’re ready for it.”

After taking Monday off, the Rays went through a Tuesday workout while awaiting an opponent. Manager Kevin Cash said they had a group of three scouts following both the Red Sox and Yankees and preparing extensive reports, and would go over the relevant one Wednesday morning.

“It’ll be great,” Cash said before the workout. “I’m actually excited because we think we know those clubs well, and I’m confident we do, but watching a team for a month inside-out, there’s probably a perspective that we can really value.”

Season series

The Rays won 11-8, though only outscored the Sox 106-104. The Sox swept an April series in Boston and the opener of a June series at the Trop, then the Rays took 11 of the last 15. That included a three-game July 30-Aug. 1 sweep — in which the Rays took over first place in the AL East from the Red Sox and never gave it back — and a spirited Sept. 6 comeback from a 7-1 deficit that led to an 11-10, 10-inning win the Rays considered their biggest of the season.

There also was an odd scene after the Sept. 1 game at the Trop and before the next one as Sox personnel measured the height and slope of the mound. The Sox finished the season 92-70, eight games behind the 100-62 Rays.

Familiar faces

The list of former Rays now with the Red Sox starts at the top, as chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom was hired in October 2019 after spending 15 years in the Tampa Bay front office. Boston players who spent time with the Rays include top starter Nathan Eovaldi, outfielder Hunter Renfroe, and infielder Christian Arroyo, the Hernando High product.

Postseason history

The Rays and Red Sox have met twice before in the playoffs.

In 2008, the Rays completed their amazing and unexpected march to the World Series by beating the Red Sox in a dramatic seven-game American League Championship Series.

The final out, with David Price throwing the pitch, Jed Lowrie hitting a ground ball and Akinori Iwamura grabbing it and stepping on second base, is one of the greatest moments in Rays history. (Side note: Cash was in the Boston dugout as the Sox’s backup catcher.)

In 2013, the Rays lost the ALDS 3-1 to the Red Sox.

The Sox won the first two games at home, as the Rays had journeyed from Toronto, where they finished the regular season, to Texas, where they won a Game 163 tiebreaker, to Cleveland, where they won the AL wild-card game, to Boston.

The Rays led 2-0 in the opener, but momentum swung rapidly in the fourth inning when they made a series of misplays, none bigger than rightfielder Wil Myers inexplicably failing to catch a fly ball. The Rays came home to win Game 3 on Jose Lobaton’s walkoff homer, then were eliminated in Game 4.

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