The Sox came one Ramon Ramirez away from blanking the Phillies in back-to-back games. Daisuke Matsuzaka, Daniel Bard and Tim Wakefield combined to keep the Phils off the board for seventeen innings! Wake notched his long-awaited first win of the 2010 season, after being spurned by Lady Luck in several of his last attempts to capture the W. The knuckler perplexed the Phillie bats for eight shutout innings as Wake's teammates did a number on Doc Halladay, lighting him up to the tune of 7 runs, 6 of which were earned.
Besides Wake, who gave the Sox their fourth kick-ass start in five games, the other star of the game was Youk, the official nemesis of Roy Halladay. Youk had himself an interesting game, starting with a triple in the second inning that, through a chain of peculiar events that can only happen in baseball, had him sitting on third base at one point. He hit the ball to right center and it escaped Victorino's glove. As he motored toward third, he slid hard (and painfully) into the bag only to get hit by the baseball as it was thrown to third baseman Gregg Dobbs. Fortunately for Youk (and the Sox) he wasn't seriously injured and stayed in the game, even homering in the sixth. Youk flashed some leather in the bottom of the sixth by snagging a ball thrown deep in the hole by Beltre, sending him tumbling backward, but still able to get a foot on the bag for the out.
The sixth inning proved to be Halladay's undoing when he was taken yard by Youk, gave up a double to Drew and back-to-back singles to Beltre and Scoots, scoring Drew. After Wake sacrificed, Ells picked up his first hit since his return, which was actually a fielder's choice gone awry. Ells hit a grounder up the middle which Juan Castro (the no-hitter spoiler from last night) grabbed and threw to third, only to find that Scoots was no longer there--in fact he was about to cross home plate! Beltre had already scored before Scoots and Ells ended up with a 2-RBI infield single.
The Sox had gotten to Halladay for a run in the second, when Drew grounded out to plate Youk, and two in the fifth, when Dobbs Bucknered a ball off the bat of Adrian Beltre that was ticketed for an inning-ending double play. One of the runs scored as a result of that error was unearned. Halladay was chased with two outs in the sixth, having thrown 99 pitches and allowing 6 earned runs. The eighth Sox run scored in the ninth, when the scuffling Pedey drew a walk from Phils reliever Danys Baez. V-Mart doubled, sending Pedey to third. Beltre sac-flied Pedey home.
With today's win, the Sox are 3 games over .500 for the first time this season. However, they're headed to a place that has given them fits for the past three years and facing a team that is running away with the division, much like the Sox themselves were in 2007. Still, with their two best pitchers going tomorrow night (Buchholz) and Tuesday night (Lester), I like their chances to win at least one game in the Dingy Dome. They'd best win one of the first two because Wednesday's matchup of Sox-killer Garza (whom I've dubbed Gargamel, after the Smurf villain) and the disturbingly inconsistent Lackey. Winning two would be awesome, but I'm not getting my hopes up--The Rays are just too ridiculously good right now. If they win one in St Pete, they will have come out of this rough 13-game stretch 7-6, which is very good considering how the season has gone this year.
LET'S GO RED SOX!!!! KEEP UP THE GREAT PITCHING, HITTING AND DEFENSE!!!
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