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Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Sox miss out on a chance to gain a game on Yankees and Rays


With the team in a tailspin lately, the Red Sox finally seemed to be receiving some good luck after their win in Oakland on Monday night not to mention Clay Buchholz (Wednesday) and Josh Beckett (Friday) are scheduled to return to the mound for the big club this week.

All those good things were overshadowed by a bitter loss last night, 5-4 to the A's in 10 innings at the Oakland Coliseum.

Boston had 12 hits to Oakland's (47-47) but that didn't matter when Kevin Kouzmanoff singled home Daric Barton off Michael Bowden for the winning run.

The Yankees got blown out by the Angels earlier in the night and the Rays ended up losing in extra innings to the Orioles, two gifts that the Red Sox (53-41) were not able to take advantage of.

In likely his last start for a while, Tim Wakefield (6 innings, 3 hits, 4 runs, 3 earned runs, 2 walks, 5 strikeouts) pitched decently but couldn't hold onto a 4-0 lead.

Kevin Youkilis gave Boston a 1-0 lead in the first with an RBI double off Dallas Braden (4.2 innings, 10 hits, 4 runs, 1 earned, 1 walk, 6 strikeouts), Marco Scutaro (2 hits, 2 runs) scored on the play but David Ortiz was thrown out at home. The Sox looked about to run away with it in the second as they added three more runs.

Bill Hall had an RBI single, Scutaro drove him in with a double and he scored on Darnell McDonald's (2 hits) RBI double.

The A's got it all back in the third as two scored on Jack Cust's double, Kurt Suzuki scored on a passed ball and Kouzmanoff drove in Cust with a sacrifice fly.

Bowden inherited Ramon Ramirez's (0-3) mess, it wasn't his fault Boston lost. Ramirez walked two, gave up a hit and was charged with the winning run.

Andrew Bailey (1-3) threw two scoreless innings for the win as Oakland's bullpen was just a hair better than Boston's.

Buchholz faces Gio Gonzalez this afternoon in the series finale. The Red Sox need a good start from Buchholz and a win to give them some juice heading into Seattle.

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