Baseball Betting: Boston Red Sox at LA Angels
Posted On Monday, July 26th, 2010 By admin
The Los Angeles Angels host the Boston Red Sox with both teams needing wins to move back in to a playoff spot. First pitch is at 10 PM ET.
The Boston Red Sox (55-44, 25-24 away) were looking pretty good at the beginning of the month. They were just 1.5-games out of the AL East lead as recently as July 3 as their offense brutalized pitchers. Since then, they have won just six of their last 18 and are back in third place trailing the Yankees by eight games.
The reason Boston is struggling is a spate of injuries. Victor Martinez, Dustin Pedroia and Mike Lowell will all be out of the lineup. When these teams met in a four-game series earlier this season, those three accounted for 13 RBIs on their way to a series sweep.
The Los Angeles Angels (52-49, 27-21 home) dropped three of four games against the Texas Rangers to fall seven games back of them in the AL West race.
The Angels signaled to their backers that they don’t believe they are out of it yet when they acquired pitcher Dan Haren. “It’s too early to quit now,” said Hideki Matsui.
Haren won’t be starting tonight. That job falls to Joel Pineiro (10-7, 4.18 ERA). Pineiro is coming off of a rough outing against another high-powered offense when he gave up six runs and eleven hits in six innings of work in a 10-6 loss to the Yankees.
On the mound for the Red Sox will be Clay Buchholz (10-5, 2.81 ERA). Buchholz will be startign for just the second time since coming back from a left hamstring injury. His first start against Oakland did not go well has he surrendered five runs and six hits in just four innings in a 6-4 loss.
