| 24 May 2010
On May 1st the Red Sox were 11-13.
With 17 games scheduled against the Tigers, Yankees, Twins, Phillies and Rays, if you had told me that the Sox would be three games above .500 on May 24th, I would have laughed in your face.
But here we are, ready to wrap up the toughest stretch up baseball this year with a 3-game set in Tampa... and the Sox are on a roll.
They had a chance to sweep the Yankees in New York, but settled for an ugly split. Then they swept the Twins at Fenway and took 2 of 3 from the defending World Champs in Philly. Meanwhile the Yankees are 4-6 in their last 10 and the Sox are now just 2.5 games behind them with a chance to steal a half game tonight.
The key had been solid pitching. With Josh Beckett on the DL, Tim Wakefield dazzles the Phillies with his knuckleball for 8 shutout innings. Matsuzaka took a no-hitter into the 8th the night before. And Buchholz and Lester dominated the Twins in back to back starts at home.
The Red Sox have scored 53 runs over their past 10 games, but against some of the best teams in the majors, you need to do more than out score your opponent. You need to keep them off the scoreboard all together and that's what the Red Sox pitching staff has done as of late.
Tonight, they face their biggest test of all. The Rays have the best pitching staff in baseball with a 2.87 ERA. They'll avoid David Price (7-1, .241), but Wade Davis (4-3, 3.35) James Shields (5-1, 3.08) and Matt Garza (5-2, 2.37) are all dangerous.
That's the bad news.
The good news is Clay Buchholz (5-3, 3.26) will share the mound with Davis in a "Battle of the Phenoms" and Jon Lester will square off James Sheilds, who hasn't had much luck against the Sox (4-7, 5.33 in 13 GS). It seems fitting that the final game of this very tough stretch will pit the Sox against Garza, who has dominated the Sox in his you career (6-2, 2.92 in 13 GS) and held the Sox to 4 hits through 8 innings in a 7-1 victory already this season.
Bottom Line: The Red Sox have the ability to win this series and with the positive mojo flowing right now, they could pull off a sweep - but don't get your hopes up. I said at the start of this stretch that if the Sox could win half of these 13 games, they would be in good shape heading into June. With six wins already in the books, they only need one win to reach that goal. Two or three wins would be amazing, and getting swept would be crushing, but they've done better than I expected them to back on May 1st, and with the Yankees struggling, they'll remain in the playoff picture regardless of of what happens in Tampa Bay.
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