The Red Sox ran off to a 10-1 lead after 5 innings. Jed Lowrie had a lot to do with that, as he went 4/4, with 3 RBI’s, 1 HR, and 3 runs scored. Andy Pettitte was chased from the game after only 3.1 innings. Josh Beckett was back in command of his game tonight, through 5 innings he gave up only 1 run, 0 walks, and had struck out 4 Yankees. He gave up back to back homers by Teixeira and A-Rod in the 6th, but got out of the inning with no more damage while holding onto a 10-3 lead. He was 1 out away from getting through the 7th when he walked Jeter and gave up his 5th homer of the night to Nick Swisher. That was it for Beckett for the night, as he departed with a 5 run lead. Recent bullpen anchor Atchison came in and coughed up a walk toTeixeira and another A-Rod homer, before ending that inning. (Slowly waltching lead slip away, grumble, grumble, grumble.) It was looking like Atchison had pitched himself on to the 2011 roster for a while, but now it’s looking he’s pitching himself back to AAA somewhere. Bard faced 4 batters, but no more damage.
9th inning, O-o-o-K… Which Papelbon will show up tonight? Pap quickly disposed of the 1st 2 Yankees he saw, and then gave up Teixeira’s 2nd homer of the night, followed by a walk to A-Rod. (No, no, no! This isn’t happening!) Six pitches later, he was luckily out of the inning by striking out Cano. Whew! Make that, WHEW!
Six of the 10 Yankee hits were home runs.
Hmmm….
The bottom 3rd of the line-up (Lowrie, Hall, McDonald) pushed in 8 of the runs, with Scutaro pushing in 2 more, (to make up for his 20th error of the season.) Drew had 3 hits, but no RBI’s or runs to show for it. Ortiz was 2/5 with 2 runs scored. Mike Lowell had a hit and scored 3 runs. Lowell was hit in the head by a sharply hit ground ball that took a bad hop. Watching the replay of that ball hitting Mike in the head, and him laying on the ground for a couple of minutes brought back horror memories of Tony C. getting hit in the head 43 years ago. Mike got up and finished the inning, but that was it for him. In came Lars to finish the game at 1st base. The NY fans gave him a nice ovation as he got back up from the ground.
While Beckett made it into the 7th inning against the Yankees for the 1st time this season, and garnering the win, his streak of 5 quality starts came to an end tonight.
A win is a win is a win. Tampa Bay got another one of those as they swapped places with New York, leaving the Sox 7 GB the Rays in 1st place, and 6.5 GB the Yankees, now in 2nd place.
Sox 10 Yankees 8 BOX SCORE
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