Red Sox at Braves Lineups: Pack Your Bags

The Boston Red Sox won their 40th game of the season on Monday, courtesy of a walk-off hit from Rafael Devers. They are one of six teams to reach this milestone this year, meaning that they are still one of the best squads in baseball at the moment.

For their next test, they’ll start an eight-game road trip by visiting a team many expected to be in the best-teams-in-baseball conversation when the season began, as they’ll face the Atlanta Braves in Atlanta at 7:20 p.m. EST on Tuesday night. However, Atlanta has had a middling season when looking at the standings and currently sits at 30-33, which is only good enough for third place in the congested National League East.

Eduardo Rodriguez will be tasked with starting off this quick two-game set for the Red Sox, giving him another opportunity to make his inflated ERA match up better with his largely solid peripherals. Right now, Rodriguez has a 6.03 ERA, but he has an expected ERA of 3.59 and both his FIP and xFIP are below 4.00 as well. For Rodriguez, who is walking fewer batters than ever and striking them out at an elevated rate, long balls have been the real problem, with the lefty currently allowing a career-worst 1.44 home runs per nine innings. He has allowed at least one dinger in four-straight starts, including in his last outing when he let up six earned runs without getting past the fifth inning against the Houston Astros.

Tucker Davidson will oppose Rodriguez by making his fifth career start. The 25-year-old made his MLB debut in 2020 but only pitched in one game for 1 ²⁄₃ innings. He’s started three games this year, logging 17 ²⁄₃ innings and a nifty 1.53 ERA, although some of his peripheral stats don’t line up with such a performance. Davidson has a 20 percent strikeout rate and 10 percent walk rate and his expected ERA comes in at 4.22. Still, in his last effort, he shut out the Philadelphia Phillies over six innings while allowing four hits and a walk and striking out four batters.

Here are the lineups for the game, with the Red Sox’s lineup per Dan Roche: