Boston (16-19, 8-11 home) won its fourth straight game, 6-1 over the Seattle Mariners (16-21, 9-13 away) tonight at Fenway Park.
Pardon me if I don't sound very excited about this fraudulent win-streak vs. the Indians and M's. I will only start to take the Red Sox seriously if they can beat quality opponents and/or do that on the road against non-AL Central squads.
So I don't sound too negative, I can be happy about the fact that Jon Lester (2-3) nearly recorded the shutout but more importantly, he pitched his first nine-inning complete game in almost two years. The perennially poor hitting Mariners could only squeeze one run across in the ninth inning when it was long over. Lester's pitch count was high (119) but he didn't walk anybody, he struck out six and he scattered eight hits.
Jason Vargas (4-3) allowed five earned runs in six innings which meant that Seattle might as well have been down 20-0 with the way that they struggle to score runs.
David Ortiz and Adrian Gonzalez had RBI doubles in the first but Daniel Nava (2-run, his 1st of the season) and Kelly Shoppach (1st of the season) bested that with homers over the Monster in the fourth. It was Nava's second career home run, everyone remembers that he hit a grand slam two years ago in his first MLB at-bat. Shoppach had a cup of coffee with Boston in 2005 but this was his first long ball for them. Marlon Byrd drove in the final Red Sox run in the eighth with a sacrifice fly.
Thankfully, this series which bores me to tears is over tomorrow afternoon (4:05 p.m., NESN) as Josh Beckett (2-4) takes a break from his main duty-golfing-to face Blake Beavan (1-3). Best case scenario for Boston is that Beckett somehow gets the win (completing a full turn around the rotation, with each guy winning) and the Red Sox head out for a very important eight-game road trip with some momentum, namely in the form of a five-game win-streak.
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