The Baltimore Orioles wrap up their series in Boston against the Red Sox on Thursday looking to leave town with a big win to keep pace with the New York Yankees in the division.
Baltimore Orioles (-115, 8.5) vs. Boston Red Sox
Since his second call-up from the minor league level in July of 2023, Orioles starting pitcher Grayson Rodriguez has been one of the game’s best starters and enters Thursday having allowed three earned runs or fewer in each of his past 14 regular season starts.
In this 14-start stretch, Rodriguez owns a 2.25 ERA with a fielding independent below 3.00 with 0.6 home runs and 2.4 walks per nine innings issued and is tasked with facing a Red Sox lineup that ranked third in the American League in runs per game at home last season with over five per game.
The Red Sox lineup entered Wednesday ranked 14th in the league in runs per game this season as the lineup transitions from losing two of their four home run leaders from a season ago in Justin Turner and Adam Duvall, but had yet to play a home series prior to the Orioles arriving on Tuesday.
Fenway Park is also one of the best hitters parks in Major League Baseball and their own pitchers struggled to perform there, ranking 13th in the American League in ERA at 4.73 while their road ERA was 4.29.
Garrett Whitlock draws the start on the mound for Boston, whose first two starts this season have been superb with just one run allowed, but he hasn’t delivered a lot of length, going just 9 1/3 innings combined in those two starts.
For his career, Whitlock has not been as effective as a starter as he has been out of the bullpen, posting a 4.41 ERA with 8.7 strikeouts and 1.4 home runs allowed per nine innings as a starter compared to a 2.65 ERA with 10.2 strikeouts and one home run per nine innings allowed as a reliever.
Both teams entered Wednesday with their bullpens in great form with the Red Sox owning a 1.98 ERA and a 2.01 ERA for the Orioles, after a season ago the Red Sox were 20th in the league in bullpen ERA while Baltimore was fifth in this category.
With Baltimore returning pretty much their whole lineup that was seventh in the league in runs per game last season and the team averaging 5.4 runs per game through their first 10 games of the season, Thursday’s game will be one for the birds.
The Play: Orioles -115
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