| 18 May 2009
The Bad News: The Red Sox lost 4 for 6 during this west coast trip.
The Good News: The Red Sox don't have to go back to the west coast this season.
The Sox had a chance to beat up on a struggling Seattle squad this weekend, but despite having a crowd full of friends and family, the Sox lost on Friday and again on Sunday.
Also... David Ortiz took the weekend off to work on his photography (right).
Friday
Jon Lester had another one-inning meltdown after the Sox handed hima 4-0 lead. Lester cruised through five innings allowing just a solo home run to Ichiro and fanning five batters, but in the sixth, the Mariners singled Lester to death and Ichiro took him deep for the second time to put the M's up 5-4.
Jacoby Ellsbury and JD Drew lead the offense, each with three hits, but the rest of the guys might as well have taken the day off with David Ortiz... Lowell and Bailey were the only other Sox to have a hit - both with one each.
Saturday
Other than his 10 K performance on opening day, Saturday was Josh Beckett's best start of the season. Francona pushed him to 119 pitches and got seven full innings out of Beckett with only three runs allowed (2 earned).
"The Jasons" provided two-run homers in the first and second inning to give the Sox a 4-0 lead, but the offense continued to sputter overall combining for just six hits total. The bullepn continued it's domination - Okajima and Ram Ram set up Papelbon for his AL leading 10th save.
Sunday
With Matsuzaka expected back this week, Justin Masterson made his final start as Dice-K fill-in on Sunday and pitched a beauty. Mastey fanned six through 6+ innings and only had one major hiccp in the second when Branyan took him deep and Cedeno tripled in a secdon run.
But Nick Green cioughed up the game when made a nice play at short and then launched the throw to first into the stands. That purt a rnner on second base with the score locked at 2-2 and Gutierrez singled in the runner on the next play... handing Ramon Ramirez his first loss of the season and the Sox their fourth loss of the road trip.
"It just ... happens," Green said. "Obviously it happened at the wrong time. I tried to slow things down. I slowed it down too much. Was lazy."
Overall, I can't blame Green alone for the loss. The offense has gone cold with Youk and Ortiz out... but Ortiz is expected to be back in the lineup on Tuesday and Youkilis is rehabbing today. The Red Sox trailed only the Blue Jays in runs cored coing into this road trip, but managed just 3.8 RPG against the Angels and Mariners (23 total) and are now tied with the Rays for 4th in the majors with 208 runs total.
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