#969 ASA PLAY ON Houston Astros -115 over Tampa Bay Rays, Wednesday at 6:50 PM ET - Houston has won 7 straight games and the Rays have already dropped the first two games of this series following the tight win over Baltimore Sunday. Before that win Sunday Tampa Bay had lost 6 of 9 games and they had scored an average of only 3 runs per game in their 10 games since the end of July. Now 12 games into August they are still averaging only 2.75 runs scored per game in these dozen games. TB is going to struggle against Ronel Blanco here in this one. Blanco is 5-2 with a 2.98 ERA in his road starts this season. Also, overall on the year, opponents are hitting a paltry .183 against the offerings of Blanco. The right-hander certainly gives the Astros the edge on the mound over the Rays and Zack Littell. The Tampa Bay right-hander has gone 5-8 this season and opponents are hitting .287 against him on the year. He just got hit hard again for the 3rd time in 6 starts. These two teams just met recently in Houston and Littell and Blanco squared off in that series and TB prevailed. Blanco had 7 strikeouts compared to just 3 for Littell and it was a bit of a tough luck loss for Blanco and Houston. We expect this to be payback for that one as the Astros are heating up once again. Houston has won 7 straight games and 8 of last 9 road games. In those 9 games away from home, the Astros have scored an average of 6 runs per game. The road team is the bet in this one.