Yankees fall apart in Detroit finale in 16-0 rout

If you have to go into the Bronx for a series late in the season, this is the way to do it. 8 Games up on the Yankees, they've just lost 3 of 4 to the Tigers ending in Mike Mussina getting lit up and pulled after 3 innings of work. The Yankee bullpen didn't fare much better and Justin Verlander posted a shutout on the usually explosive Yankee offense. The Yankees limp into the Bronx still in wild card contention thanks to Seattle's 3 game losing streak. The Rocket choked in the opener of the series giving up 6 runs over 5 innings, the bullpen had to cover the remaining 5 2/3 before the lead was blown in the 11th. Tonight the Yankee bullpen had to eat the remaining 5 innings Mussina left them. The Red Sox had an off day today and walk into Yankee stadium with the best record in baseball and coming off of one of the biggest routs in baseball history as they destroyed the White Sox in Chicago to sweep a four game series and outscored them 46-7. The sox are red hot and the Yankees are ice cold, seems like the perfect conditions to finally KO the Yankees' AL East ambitions.

The Great Chicago Fire of 2007

Fortunately for the Chicago fans, at this point in the year they've already dropped the White Sox in favor of the cubs and didn't have to witness the incredible beating they took at the hands of the Red Sox in this four game series. The consistently inconsistent Sox offense seemed to finally be clicking all throughout this series as they lit up the White Sox pitching staff for 46 Runs over 4 games. FORTY-SIX! In the meantime the Yankees struggled with the Angels and the Tigers and the AL East lead is back to a robust 7.5 Games. I can't think of a better way to roll into the Bronx with a chance to put the Yankees out of the AL East race for good and possibly set them back in the Wild Card.

Takin' Care of Business...

The sox put up two quality games against the Rays as the Yankees dropped their first two to the Angels in dramatic fashion.

Tim Wakefield continued to confound the Devil Ray whippersnappers with his knuckleball and Kevin Cash filled in admirably for the injured Doug Mirabelli. It's nice to see that the sox have found somebody in the organization besides Mirabelli who can catch the knuckleball without a dozen passed balls per game. Seeing the sox getting to Scott Kazmir early and often was also a nice touch as he typically pitches so well against the Red Sox. There really isn't much to complain about from the first game, they did everything well on both sides of the ball and cruised to an expected victory.

The second game the Red Sox again put up another strong performance offensively, but raised some concerns about Jon Lester. What really killed me about Lester's performance was the walks and homeruns. He gave up 4 walks over 5 1/3, one was of no consequence, two would be brought home by a subsequent home run and the last would buy him an early ticket out of this game. If he's giving up walks and then giving up homeruns when the pressure is on it could be bad news against an offensive powerhouse like the Yankees. Manny Delcarmen is still struggling to regain his form from earlier this season and seemed to be having some control issues when he hit a batter and walked a batter to bring Okajima into the game. Declarmen hasn't had any Gagne level screw ups, but hasn't looked all that sharp lately either. Papelbon looked really dominant in the last four outs of the game striking out the first three batters he faced and getting the last out on a popup. I think alot of people were expecting a second half drop off by Papelbon like they had seen in previous years, but Paps looks as though he hasn't lost a beat. In August he's had 8 appearances, allowed one hit, walked 3 and struck out 14 batters.

Tonight Dice-K goes for the sweep. The Rays have won two games against the Sox all year, both were in Dice-K's last two starts against the DRays. His first loss was a tough luck loss leaving a tight 1-0 game in the 7th inning before Manny Delcarmen gave up back to back homers to give the Rays a substantial lead. In his last start he fell apart in the third inning against the Rays and left the game after six innings with a 6-0 defecit. Hopefully Dice-K can turn it around tonight with a win.

Sox split 4 with the Angels at Fenway

The sox split four games with the Angels at Fenway park and there's quite a bit to talk about. Clay Bucholz made his first major league start and got his first major league win. Eric Gagne managed to throw away another game for the Red Sox. The Sox bats seemed to wake up for the first 3 games of this series and then posted one measly run in the finale.

Clay Bucholz has been a highly touted prospect all season long and got his first taste of the big leagues in the day game of the day/night double header on Friday. He pitched reasonably well all things considered. He pitched against the offensively powerful Angels, but he caught them at an excellent time as they flew in from Toronto the night before and had to play a double header the following day. So I would guess that that evens out. The sox bats took the Pressure off Bucholz early by posting six runs on John Lackey in the first. Bucholz had some trouble with giving up leadoff walks/hits, was helped on multiple occasions by double plays, seemed to struggle with control at times, only pitched six innings and gave up four runs to keep the Angels in the game; but all in all I still felt this wasn't a bad showing for his first outing in the Majors. He'll likely benefit from some more time in Pawtucket and could be a strong contributor for the sox in the future.

Eric Gagne managed to do it again. The entire town of Boston seems to have collectively lost it's patience with the struggling reliever who once again gave up the lead and probably the win. The only people that haven't lost their patience seems to be the Red Sox themselves as Gagne was put in the game with a 3-1 defecit in the final game of the Angels series where he again allowed multiple runners on base before closing out the inning. I would just love to have something to cling to so I could defend Gagne. One situation where he comes out, throws a clean inning and heads back to the dugout. Since he's been in a Sox uniform he just has not been able to deliver on this for us and it's starting to concern me.

Curt Schilling had a rough outing in his start. Fortunately, the sox bats provided him with 10 runs to smooth out the rough edges and this less impressive start by Schilling got swept under the rug as he took home the win. Since his return from the DL Curt has put up a 4.50 ERA, not terrible, but not that great either.

Julian Tavarez put up a solid 6 IP 2H 2 ER in the finale which would unfortunately go to waste as the sox bats were unable to produce the runs to capitalize.

Kevin Youkilis' slump continues going 2 for 14 in the series with 6 strikeouts and 1 walk.

This upcoming series in Tampa will hopefully settle the Red Sox down. The road trip continues to a 4 game series with another division cellar dweller in the White Sox, then an off day and then a three game series in the Bronx. The Yankees will take 3 games against the Angels on the West Coast, an off day, and then 4 games against Detroit in Detroit before meeting the Sox in the bronx. This is an excellent opportunity for the Red Sox to make up for some lost ground by playing the AL's worst while the Yankees play the AL's best.

DiceK gives up so many runs even the Rays bullpen can't blow it!

It's amazing how playing against a team like the Devil Rays changes your perception of what's good. Anything short of a sweep against the Rays feels like a failure. The sox managed to eventually score some runs off the starter Sonnanstine and almost won another game off of the weakness of Tampa Bay's bullpen. Fortunately, the Yankees dropped their series to the Orioles after hitting a 3 run home run in the 9th to put the game into extra innings. This two game losing streak may be indicative that the Yankees are cooling off once again. Both Yankee losses must be disheartening given the 12-0 pounding they took in the second game and then losing after a dramatic ninth inning comeback and hopefully this will carry over into their next few games. At this point I almost feel like a Yankee loss is better than a Red Sox win as I'd prefer it if the Yankees didn't win the wild card. Facing and losing to the Yankees in the Post Season would feel like a colossal failure after dominating them in the standings all year long.

Sox Pitching
Daisuke had a pretty terrible outing, his worst since early July. He's still adjusting and he's put up some solid numbers in his last few starts, so that's not what concerns me. The troubling part about this game was that he got beat up by the Devil Rays. Daisuke only had one clean inning and most of his others looked shaky right from the start.

Julian Tavarez would take over and pitch a clean inning and got into a bit of trouble in his second inning of work before handing off to Mike Timlin.

Mike Timlin wrapped up the eighth and threw a clean ninth and has looked extremely strong lately. Outside of Timlin's meltdown in Seattle back on August 3rd where he took the loss, he's been light's out in his recent appearances and could become a key contributor if Eric Gagne isn't as reliable as we had hoped.

Sox Hitting
The sox did the same thing all three games of this series. The Tampa Bay starter gave a good start and was pulled after 6-7 innings despite their lights out performance and the bullpen would come into the game and efficiently give up whatever runs were necessary to ensure a loss. It had worked in the first two games of the series, why not the third? Unfortunately, Daisuke gave up one too many and the sox bats couldn't pull off the late inning heroics despite both Ortiz and Manny coming to bat in the ninth with the opportunity to win/tie the game. This is another episode in a disturbing trend where Big Papi and Manny both seem to have lost their ability to get the big hit when it really matters. Our late game heroics have been coming from the likes of Mike Lowell, Coco Crisp, Jason Varitek and even Julio Lugo this season.

Kevin Youkilis has not looked like himself all series long going 1 for 13 with 6 strikeouts and no walks over the course of this series. All three stats are astounding given that he's been a consistent hitter all year who is good at drawing walks and rarely strikes out. Dustin Pedroia, JD Drew and David Ortiz also went hitless today although Ortiz was able to draw 2 walks.

Sox walk off in ninth to drop the Rays 2-1

The sox really needed a nice easy series against the Rays to bounce back from the terrible showing against the Orioles over the weekend. Tonight Red Sox nation is resting just a little easier. Jon Lester had an extremely strong outing, which he desperately needed given the three shaky starts he posted prior to this game. Eric Gagne is still without a clean inning, but managed to hold onto a one run lead and hopefully built up some self confidence and gained some goodwill with the hometown faithful after a the weekend from hell in Baltimore. He even picked up the win for his inning of work. The Red Sox again showed that when absolutely necessary they do have what it takes to come back and win. A solo homerun from Mike Lowell, a double that almost left the park from Jason Varitek and a single from the ill Coco Crisp was enough to win the series against the Rays. While this was going on the Yankees fell very flat against the O's in a 12-0 rout bouncing the Red Sox lead in the AL East back up to 5 games.

Sox Pitching: B+
Lester: A-
Manny Delcarmen: C-
Mike Timlin: Incomplete
Eric Gagne: B+

Lester's only blemish on the day came in the form of a Carl Crawford leadoff double in the 4th followed by a single and a sacrifice fly. 5 of his 7 Innings were clean and minus an inconsequential leadoff walk in the first he retired the next 3 batters easily. He really made the Tampa Bay Devil Rays look like.......the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Manny Delcarmen looked shaky allowing a leadoff single and a walk to put himself in a 2 on and no out situatuion in the 7th. Luckily MDC pitched his way to two outs, intentionally walked Carl Crawford before handing off to Mike Timlin who finished off the inning. Gagne would come in for the ninth and looked sharp striking out 3 of the 4 batters he faced. The two out double by Harris keeps Gagne from recording his first clean appearance by the sox, but he still managed to get the job done.

Sox Hitting: C-
Heroes: Mike Lowell (1 for 4, HR), Jason Varitek (1 for 2, 2 BB, R), Coco Crisp (1 for 4, RBI)
Goats: Julio Lugo (0 for 4), David Ortiz (0 for 3, BB)

I have alot of respect for the pitching abilities of Scott Kazmir, ever since his rookie season I've noticed him as one of the bright spots on a team without many bright spots. I often wonder if he would be a household name if he were on a team that could put up some runs for him. That said, the Red Sox still looked incredibly lame against Rays pitching for eight innings. One of the benefits of playing the Rays at this point in the season was manifest as they pulled Kazmir after 6 innings despite only giving up 4 hits and working on a shutout. With the Rays unable to make the post season this move makes perfect sense and again the sox reaped the benefits by scoring their runs off the Tampa Bay bullpen. It looked as though the sox would start turning the tide immediately in the 7th with a leadoff walk to start the inning, but a botched bunt attempt by coco crisp and double play ball by JD Drew would end the inning. The eighth was an uneventful 1-2-3. A borderline strike 3 call on Manny Ramirez for the first out of the ninth had me sweating bullets, but fortunately Mike Lowell delivered with a home run over the monster. Youk would strike out on another questionable strike 3 call before the magic began. With two outs Jason Varitek hit a shot deep to right, just a few feet shy of a home run. Coco followed up with a hit, the throw was off and Varitek was able to score from second without a play at the plate.

Public Enemy #1

I wonder how much Steinbrenner paid to get Gagne to throw every close game he entered? That's the only explanation I can come up with to explain his dismal performance ever since joining the sox. This is the second easily winnable game that Gagne has handed to the lowly Orioles and cost the Red Sox another game over the Yankees as the lead in the AL East fell to four. He's managed to waste two excellent starts by both Daisuke Matsuzaka and Curt Schilling.