Back-to-Back-to-Back-to-Back! (Lucky Sevens)

What a glorious weekend in Red Sox Nation! Here's a recap of the games from Saturday and Sunday:

4/21 (7-5, Sox win)
4/22 (7-6, Sox win)

On Saturday Beckett benefited from a ton of offense and pitched well enough to hang on to the lead and move to 4-0 on the season. Ortiz hit a two run bomb, Coco went 2-4 and has a higher BA than Manny, Varitek also went 2-4 to continue his offensive recovery, and Pedroia sat out the game. As good of a game as it was, it was the easiest win the Sox had this weekend and probably the least memorable of the set, with the possible exception of Papelbon's save.

Sunday's game was pure insanity. Wright pitched solid through two innings, with Dice-K giving up 3 runs by the time the Sox got to bat in the 3rd. The first two batters were sent back to the dugout with nothing to show, sending Man-Ram to the plate. Then the flood gates opened... Manny homers, JD homers, Lowell homers, & Tek homers, back-to-back-to-back-to-back!! Sox take the lead, 4-3. Dice-K proceeded to give up two more runs, giving the Yanks the lead once more by a score of 5-4. Lowell homered again with two on in the 7th to give the Sox the lead for good at 7-5. One more Yankee run would come in with Okajima in relief for Dice-K in the 8th, but Donnelly came in to get the last two outs and Papelbon shut them down in the 9th with some game-saving help from his brand new best friend Pedroia at second. Pedroia also looked good offensively, slapping a nice double down the left field line past A-Rod and making solid contact in each at bat. Plus it was fitting watching A-Rod fail to step up in the clutch against us yet again, despite his incredibly hot April. Overall, my stomach was in knots the whole time... what a great example of the tension & suspense that makes baseball the best sport there is.

While I have very few negatives to highlight from Sunday's performance, there were a few.

1. Coco started the game on the bench, possibly due to an injury sustained on Friday night, but barring that I thought it was foolish to leave him out in favor of WMP when he's showing signs of coming out of his slump.
2. The Yankees came into town with several key players on the DL. If it took this level of heroics to pull off a sweep in April, there might be cause for concern once the Evil Empire's healthy again.
3. We left 22 men on base and had only one run-scoring hit with men in scoring position, namely Lowell's home run in the 7th. Not good, but at least we still pulled it off.

As of this morning the Sox have won 5 in a row & have the best winning percentage in all of baseball, .706. Beckett leads the majors with 4 wins and Dice-K is 3rd in the majors with 31 K's. Not bad after a 3-game set with the Yankees.

The Jays are in town tonight for a quick two game set starting @ 7:05. We get a repeat of the Ohka vs. Wakefield game we saw in Toronto, and with the Jays on a 5-game slide hopefully it'll have a similar outcome!

Three More Wins

Since I only got to listen to our last two games against the Jays, here's a recap.

4/18 (4-1, Sox win)
4/19 (5-3, Sox win)

Quick thoughts:

Wed: Only 5 hits for the Jays... Mirabelli goes deep... Wakefield gets some love... That knuckleball's working well this year... I might've been a little hard on Lugo in that last game, that runner was damn close to being completely in his way.

Thur: Coco's waking up... Tavarez did a great job keeping us in the game... Manny picked a nice time for his first home run... Another save for Papelbon... Until Friday's game it was easily the most important, confidence-building win of the season.

Friday was an outstanding come from behind win against the Yankees, with Mariano Rivera blowing yet another lead against the Red Sox. It started with Schilling vs. Pettitte. Schilling gave up two homers to A-Rod, who became the fastest to 12 home runs, in 15 games. Aside from Tek's 2-run blast the bats were pretty quiet against Pettitte. Coco almost killed himself slamming into the bullpen wall going after one of A-Rod's home runs. The eighth inning started off 6-2 Yankees and ended 7-6 Red Sox. Okijima came in to close it out and picked up the save since Paps was unavailable.

From ESPN, here's how it all went down:

"J.D. Drew had three hits for Boston, which trailed 5-2 before David Ortiz led off the eighth with a double and Manny Ramirez walked. Drew moved the runners up, then Mike Lowell singled to make it 6-3 and bring in Rivera. Jason Varitek, who hit a two-run homer in the fourth, singled to make it 6-4, then Crisp tripled down the right-field line to tie it. With the infield in, Cora fisted a blooper over Jeter's head to the back of the infield dirt, driving in the go-ahead run."

The Sox wore their green St. Patrick's Day uniforms and apparently it was the first time in team history that the players have had their names on the back of their uniforms while playing @ home. My roommate walked in the door, took one look at the TV, and asked "What, are the Sox celebrating 4/20?". In a way, I guess they were :)

Dice-K's the new Wakefield

You can't help but feel bad for Daisuke after yesterday's game. He was throwing beautifully until it all came unravelled in the 4th. Between the call at the plate that got him rattled (sorry all, that was a ball...), the screw up by Lugo (knew it would happen eventually), and getting robbed on Lowell's throw to first it was a mess. But to his credit he got out of the inning and came back to own the Jays for the next two innings. Hideki pitched an awesome inning too, striking out the side, and even Pinero looked good. But, once again, the Sox bats failed to come to life and give this kid some support. Hell, he's done all we can really ask of any pitcher in his first three starts, and has a record of 1-2 to show for it.

This brings us to the offense... props to WMP for that monster of a homerun up on top of the old restaurant. I don't think I've ever seen a ball hit that far in Toronto. But man, 1 run on 7 hits when the Jays only had three 3 hits the whole game. Manny needs to shave his head or something, the dude needs to wake up already cuz .205 with no homers just ain't his style. Youk, Ortiz, and Lugo all went 0 for 4. Then there's Tek... give up hitting lefty and focus on just one side of the plate, please!!! I really think he'd be way better off spending his time in the cage focused on hitting from one side, but we probably won't see that happen. Ahh yes, and Coco... nice game yesterday going 2-4, got the average back up to .150. Let's hope he can keep it up. Anyway, Wakefield goes tonight, let's hope we can turn it around against Ohka who's 0-1 with a 7.84 ERA. Then maybe we'll have a chance of improving on last year's record of 7-12 against the Jays.

The time has come (almost)!

Wow, talk about a hell of a home opener... hard for things to go any better than they did yesterday (Box Score). Beckett went seven innings, threw 83 pitches, struck Ichiro out three times, had 8Ks overall on the day, and let up only two hits, bringing his WHIP down to 0.67 for this ever so young season.

What else... Drew had his first homer, Tek did well towards pulling himself out of his slump, there was an almost brawl that will hopefully continue into today, and the starters were getting pulled by the 5th inning to give the bench players a change to play. All in all a shalacking that I'm sure the Mariners will be looking to reverse tonight.

Today's game is between Dice-K and the "ace" of the Mariners, Felix Hernandez, who struck out 12 in his last start against the A's. Of course that was back on April 2nd, so hopefully things have changed since then... I'm expecting a pitchers duel all the way around tonight, between Matsuzaka will be on point for his first home start and the Sox bats are going to be fairly quiet after all the work they got yesterday. Sometimes a team can use up all of it's offense for a few days in one game, and I have an odd feeling that's what we'll see today.