Welcome to the second game of the American League Divisional Series between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Boston Red Sox. To say the pressure is all on the Rays this afternoon is beyond an understatement. In yesterday's game one, Tampa made a lot of mistakes, including an all-time blooper by rookie outfielder Wil Myers, and Boston capitalized on almost every single one on route to a 12-2 blowout victory. Don't expect a similar crooked number this afternoon, as the Rays will give the ball to David Price (10-8, 3.33 ERA, regular season), one of the game's most dangerous starting pitchers in baseball, who was basically single-handedly eliminating the Texas Rangers the last time we saw him.  The Red Sox will counter with John Lackey (10-13, 3.52 ERA, ditto), the former Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim ace who was, thanks to his hefty contract and ineffective pitching, has mostly been a symbol for all that's gone wrong for the Red Sox in the last few years. This season, however, Lackey has been the sharpest as he's been in since his All-Star days in California. He's been particularly difficult to hit at home at Fenway Park, a big reason why manager John Farrell has tapped him for game two over Clay Buchholz and Jake Peavy. The losing record doesn't do his year justice, as Lackey has been the victim of ridiculously poor run support, something unlikely to change today considering that whole "David Price is really good at baseball" thing.  At the risk of repeating myself, well at the certainty of repeating myself really, the preamble I wrote for yesterday's game still applies for this series:  Believe it or not, the Boston Red Sox haven't been to the postseason since 2009, although you're forgiven for thinking otherwise given the sheer amount of media attention they've received during the interim. In fact they haven't won a postseason game since Game 6 of the 2008 American League Championship Series against, that's right, these very same Tampa Bay Rays. Well, okay maybe it wasn't the exact same Tampa Bay Rays team, this was back when the team was a likable group of surprising underdogs (like the Pittsburgh Pirates this postseason). Since then, the Red Sox have gone through a lot of turmoil (the injury-plagued 2010 season, the disastrous September swoon in 2011, everything that Bobby Valentine did in 2012). Meanwhile, the Tampa Bay Rays have become a major player in the American League East by making inspired trades (swapping James Shields for the Kansas City Royals' uber-prospect Wil Myers being the latest example) and taking a page from Amanda Waller and the Suicide Squad by picking up, um, less than desirable personalities around the game (banana chip tossing birther Luke Scott, homophobic clubhouse problem Yunel Escobar, lovable anti-Semitic slur fan Delmon Young and thankfully-off-the-playoff roster Josh Lueke).  Bizarrely enough, this year the Red Sox have been the underdog team in this matchup. After surviving the reign of Bobby Valentine and a reset-button hitting trade that sent an entire offseason's worth of high-priced acquisitions to the Los Angeles Dodgers (where they're doing just fine it seems), new manager (and former Sox pitching coach) John Farrell guided the team, who ended up dead last in the AL East standings last season, to the best record in the AL, providing them with home field advantage for the rest of the playoffs. While a lot of credit has been given to Farrell, and the improved locker room chemistry thanks to Farrell and free agents like Jonny Gomes and Shane Victorino, the Red Sox revival has primarily happened because their pitching has gotten better in the last few years. Funny how that always seems to happen to teams that "have good locker room chemistry". Chief example? This afternoon's starter Jon Lester, who has returned to form as one of the game's best left-handed pitchers after a few years where he struggled. His improvement (along with that of 2011 goat John Lackey) is a huge reason why Boston is back in the playoffs (or, I guess, you can credit it all to beards if you're absolutely psychotic and/or part of the national media).  The Red Sox have had the luxury of waiting around since Sunday while the Tampa Bay Rays have had to fight for their playoff lives. They had to survive a play-in game on Monday just to make it to the Wild Card game against the Cleveland Indians. You'll never believe this but the key to the Rays' survival has been, gasp, superior starting pitching. David Price threw a complete game against the Texas Rangers, getting the annual Rangers disappointing exit out of the way early this season and then Alex Cobb and the bullpen stymied the Cleveland Indians, dashing dreams that former Red Sox manager and current Indians manager Terry Francona (whose completely fake Twitter clone NotCoachTito will join me here for this liveblog) would face off against his former team. Instead, Rays manager Joe Maddon will send Matt Moore, not a bad third starter to have, to the mound for Game 1 of the ALDS.  It should be a good series, at least I hope so after yesterday's playoff game duds. The Rays and the Sox are evenly matched despite the gap in the standings, it feels like every game they played during the regular season had either a ninth inning comeback/rally or spilled into extra innings. The Rays have had the disadvantage of playing two elimination games this week just to punch their ticket to Fenway Park this afternoon, but the Red Sox have had such a long layoff that they've had to play split-squad games during the week in an attempt to avoid any Game 1 rustiness.  I think that's enough from me at this very moment, we want to hear from you! If you have something to say about today's game, the other playoff matches or really anything related to the MLB, shoot out an email hunter.felt.freelance@guardiannews.com or tweet @HunterFelt. and we'll use them here throughout the afternoon. It's the Tampa Bay Rays vs the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park for ALDS Game Two. First pitch is scheduled at 5:37pm EST/10:37pm BST, but we'll be back a bit before that, which makes this the perfect time to catch up on David Lengel's MLB Playoffs Preview.
David Ortiz's two home runs help the Boston Red Sox defeat the Tampa Bay Rays 7-4 and take a 2-0 lead in the ALDS