That's exactly what the Red Sox are doing in this stretch of rough road (with the little 2-gamer with Minny sandwiched in between). After a shaky start, dropping 2 of 3 in Detroit, the Sox split a series in the Bronx, swept 2-gamer at home against the Twins, took two of three in Philly, and have won the first two in Tampa Bay. In this 13-game stretch, they are 8-4 so far and have improved their season record to 26-21, or 5 games over .500.
What is responsible for this turnaround? How did they go from a team fraught with inconsistency to one that looks like a playoff contender in such as short time? In a word: Pitching. It started with Buchs 8-inning gem against the Twins at Fenway. The next night, Lester tossed a complete game, allowing a single earned run. Two nights later, Dice-K came within 4 outs of no-hitting the best lineup in the NL, tossing 8 innings of one-hit ball. Wake followed the next day with 8 shutout innings of his own. Buchholz came into the Trop and threw 6 innings, allowing only one run and Lester threw 6 shutout innings tonight. A rested bullpen, thanks to Dice and Wake each going 8 kept the Rays off the board. In two games, the team with the best record in baseball have only scored one run off of Red Sox pitching. Tomorrow, that could change, but for now, I'll savor that accomplishment.
The offense have also played a role by staying hot (or, at the very least, warm) and scoring enough runs to win and then some. Papi and Youk have been raking and Youk is an on-base machine. Pedey broke his slump by going 3 for 5 last night and 1 for 4 today. Ells and Cam returned from the DL and while their bats haven't yet warmed up, their gloves have made the outfield all the better. That brings me to the defense. One of the main goals of the offseason and the reason behind the acquisitions of Adrian Beltre, Marco Scutaro, and Mike Cameron, things didn't go too well for the defense early on in the season. It was wildly inconsistent, with multi-error games and made the struggling starting pitchers struggle even harder. It's hard to pitch to contact when the gloves aren't there. Over this stretch, the pitching and defense have come together in a way the Sox brass hoped they would. It's what the fans were hoping for as well.
Tomorrow night, they'll face Garza a.k.a. Gargamel, so runs will likely be hard to come by. It will be up to Lackey to continue the trend of stellar starting pitching. His outing in Philly was the one outlier in the string of gems that started last week and he seems to have lost command of the strike zone. Perhaps the accomplishments of his teammates will push him to get his command back to where it needs to be. Even if they don't win tomorrow night's game--and sweeping a team as deep and as talented as the Tampa Bay Rays is a very tall order--the Sox will have come away from the rough stretch winning 3 of the five series, losing one and splitting one, with an 8-5 record. Still, I hope the Red Sox' winning mojo continues and they pull off that improbable sweep.
LET'S GO RED SOX!!!! KEEP ON ROLLING!!!!!
In other baseball news, in Minnesota's brand spankin' new Target Field, a certain little critter wanted an up-close and personal look at a major league baseball game. Yes, there was a brief squirrel delay in the fourth inning of the Twins/Yanks game. The game, which had no score, was eventually suspended an inning later for more mundane reasons (rain). Looks like a double-header in Minny tomorrow and Squirrel Patrol will be on high alert.
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