Coco Crisp brakes for Moose, Moose doesn't return the favor, Sox beat Mariners 9-2

Having broken their Safeco winless streak the night prior, the sox chose to bask in the glory of having that monkey off their collective backs by beating up Seattle in the finale of their season series.

SOX PITCHING: B
Beckett: B
Hideki Okajima: Incomplete
Manny Delcarmen: A-
Kyle Snyder: C+

For the second game in a row the Red Sox starting pitcher had excellent numbers that didn't really reflect how close the pitcher came to giving up a big inning. In the 1st, 3rd, 4th and 6th innings Beckett ended the inning with two stranded baserunners and the 5th was his only 1-2-3 Inning. For all those baserunners Seattle was only able to convert for one run against Beckett in his 6 2/3 IP. Okajima's services were wasted on his 1/3 inning of relief, but after extending the lead to 7 runs in the top of the 8th bringing him back in for another inning of work just didn't make sense. Manny Delcarmen effectively ate an inning with a nice 1-2-3 8th. Kyle Snyder gave up Seattle's only other run, but with the 8 run lead he was working with he can be forgiven for not throwing for contact and the fielder's indifference that allowed Ichiro to steal second and later convert into a run off of Vidro's single. The way I see it, his ERA was the only thing on the line at that point.

Sox Hitting: B+
Heroes: David Ortiz (1 for 2, 3 BB, 1 RBI), Mike Lowell (2 for 4, 1 BB, 1 RBI)
Goat: Jason Varitek (0 for 4, 1 BB, 1 RBI)

It is so hard to complain about sox hitting given that the sox put up 9 runs this game, but here goes. They certainly passed up multiple chances to blow this game wide open earlier. The first and last runs of the game were assisted by Mariner errors. Despite scoring two runs in the 1st inning they still left the bases loaded. They loaded the bases again the next inning, this time with one out before Manny Ramirez hit into an inning ending double play and scoring no runs. They would score 3 runs in the 8th, but would again leave the bases loaded. Although the game was basically over at this point, they also left two baserunners on in the 9th. You get the idea. The bottom line was that they pulled it together in the later innings and managed to score more than enough runs to secure this game.