The New York Yankees are on the verge of ending the Boston Red Sox’s season for the second consecutive year. These historic rivals have only met six times in the playoffs, but their proximity, historic success, and city rivalry make every matchup more important.
New York is a -136 favorite at DraftKings Sportsbook to end the series tonight. Max Fried will take the mound for the Yankees, and Sonny Gray will toe the rubber for the Red Sox (+113 Moneyline).
Below, I’ll break down my two favorite player prop bets from tonight’s game, focusing on one player from each team.
Red Sox at Yankees Best Prop Bets Tonight for Wednesday 9/30/26
Ben Rice 1+ RBI’s (+204)
Rice probably won’t record six RBI’s like he did in Game 1, but he ranked fourth in the AL in that stat this season. He also drove in at least one run in six of his final 14 regular season games, so +204 is pretty good value. Rice had a brutal first 49 games after the All-Star break, batting just .214, but he finished the season on a tear, which carried over to Game 1. He’ll be New York’s leadoff batter today against the right-handed Gray, so he should take most of his at-bats behind ninth hitter Ryan McMahon. McMahon hasn’t had a good season overall, but he’s posted a .760 OPS at Yankee Stadium and owns an OPS nearly 160 points higher against righties than lefties.
On paper, Rice has a tough matchup in Gray, who recorded a 2.72 ERA in 29 starts this season, but his advanced numbers suggest that he hasn’t been quite as good as his counting stats. Gray sports only a 39th-percentile expected batting average and a 35th-percentile average exit velocity, so Rice (who finished the regular season with a .961 OPS against right-handed pitchers) could easily go deep, eliminating the need for McMahon to get on base ahead of him. The 36-year-old throws his four-seam fastball most frequently against left-handed batters, and Rice slugged .816 against righty four-seamers.
Sonny Gray 6+ Strikeouts (-108)
Gray doesn’t have the best strikeout stuff, as he ranked in just the 43rd percentile in strikeout rate this season, but six strikeouts is a fair bar, given that he had at least six in five of his final nine starts of the season. He’s pretty good at generating chases, ranking in the 77th percentile in that stat, so if the Yankees get overly aggressive, he definitely could rack up some strikeouts on pitches outside the zone. Plus, given how disastrously the bullpen performed yesterday, Chad Tracy might feel incentivized to keep Gray in the game if he’s performing decently.
New York’s offense can be a bit boom-or-bust. While the Yankees sport the league’s highest barrel rate and finished the season with the 11th-highest OPS despite a brutal stretch in August, they also struck out the sixth-most times while whiffing at the fourth-highest frequency. In Game 1, New York only struck out four times, but that was tied for its third-best performance of the season. In Gray’s most recent game against the Yankees, on June 28, he struck out nine batters in 7.1 innings of one-hit, shutout ball.
More MLB Content & Betting Picks
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