The Red Sox (6-13) square off with the first-place Rays (14-5), whom they already somehow trail by eight games so far, when the teams meet tonight in Florida (7:10 p.m.) Andrew Benintendi’s back on the top of the lineup for Boston, while Tzu-Wei Lin gets the start at second base as the Sox reckon, poorly, with the end of the Dustin Pedroia experiment. The team’s a mess, and Lin will help to clean it up, no matter how temporary a solution.
The Rays have been the anti-Sox this year — always actually, but who’s counting?