Tampa Bay's Carl Crawford is on the DL and might be out for the rest of the season. Evan Longoria broke his wrist and will also be out for the near future. The Yankees are 9 games back in the AL East and 5 in the Wild Card. The Bronx Bombers are on life support.
The AL playoff picture is slowly sorting itself out; it looks like the Rays and Sox will be duking it out for the AL East, the Angels have the AL West wrapped up and the White Sox and Twins will be in a dogfight in the AL Central. More than any other factor, the reason to have faith in the Red Sox at least making the playoffs is the fact that a top-3 of Beckett, Dice-K and Lester is pretty nice. When October rolls around, its all about pitching, defense and timely hitting as Joe Buck will tell you 1000 times during the first playoff game.
Your Boston Red Sox certainly have issues of their own: Tim Wakefield is on the DL, Clay Buchholz sucks, David Ortiz, Mike Lowell, Kevin Youkilis and a host of others are banged up but the Sox have a chance to make a move in the AL East the next few weeks as the Rays (hopefully) come back to earth somewhat and the Yankees continue to plummet.
Boston (68-51) earned a split with the Chicago White Sox (65-52) last night with a 5-1 come-from-behind win.
White Sox starter John Danks (9-5) actually had a no-hitter up until one out in the seventh when Youkilis hit a broken bat single over shortstop Orlando Cabrera. After a Mike Lowell walk, J.D. Drew delivered with a two-run single.
The Red Sox added three runs in the ninth on Jed Lowrie's (how good is he?) two-run double and Jacoby Ellsbury's RBI single.
For the second straight time, Josh Beckett (11-8) looked like the 2007 Beckett that should have won the Cy Young. He lasted eight innings and could have closed it out in the ninth but Jonathan Papelbon needed to get out there after having only one other appearance on the road trip. Beckett allowed one run on seven hits with no walks and eight strikeouts.
Chicago scored its lone run in the third when scumbag A.J. Pierzynski knocked in hillbilly Nick Swisher with a sacrifice fly.
With one of the best home records (40-16) in all of baseball, the Red Sox have six at Fenway this week: three against the Texas Rangers and then three vs. the Toronto Blue Jays. Pawtucket knuckleballer Charlie Zink was called up for tonight's game.
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