St. Petersburg, Fla. ? Young, eager and brimming with confidence.

The surprising Tampa Bay Rays spent the entire season dispelling the notion that they were too inexperienced to compete with the Boston Red Sox, and the AL East champions aren’t about to stop believing in themselves now that they’re four wins from the World Series.

“We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves,” left fielder Carl Crawford said, “but we definitely feel good about our chances.”

With good reason.

The Rays won the season series between the division rivals, 10-8, taking eight of nine meetings at Tropicana Field, where the best-of-seven ALCS begins Friday night. The managers set their pitching rotations Wednesday, with Tampa Bay’s James Shields facing 18-game winner Daisuke Matsuzaka in the opener.

“I just have to go out there and pitch my game. I’m one not to change anything,” said Shields, who matched a Rays record with 14 regular-season wins. “I’ve had a lot of success this year doing what I do. I feel pretty good right now. I feel alive. I’m ready to go.”

The defending World Series champion Red Sox won seven of nine between the clubs at Fenway Park, but both of Tampa Bay’s wins there came in mid-September while the Rays were taking four of six from the Red Sox in a 10-day span.

After spending the last two months of the season chasing the Rays, the Red Sox would be the last to call Tampa Bay’s success a fluke.

“I understand some of the story behind this. They haven’t had any success going into this year and all of a sudden they went from the bottom to the top. It’s a great story for baseball. It made our life a little bit more miserable this year,” Boston manager Terry Francona said.

“If you look at their team from top to bottom, there really shouldn’t be a surprise,” he added. “They have a real good thing going. Our job will be to derail that.”

That won’t be easy, especially with the series starting at The Trop, where the Rays compiled the best home record in baseball (57-24) and won the first two games of their first-round playoff series against Chicago.