Boston (59-63, 30-29 away) went quietly in the night with a 4-1 loss to New York (72-49, 39-24 home) to wrap up a series loss (2-1) at Yankee Stadium. The Red Sox fell to 4-8 against the Yankees this season. There are two more series between these woefully mismatched rivals: at Fenway in September and closing out the regular season in the Bronx the first few days of October.
Josh Beckett (5-11) couldn't contain one of MLB's best sluggers as Ichiro Suzuki took him deep for solo homers in the fourth and sixth innings. The Texas Toughguy had about his best outing possible: six innings, four earned runs, seven hits, six strikeouts, three walks and two home runs allowed but he still lost.
Even with Beckett's extended breaks between pitches, this one was over in 2 hours and 51 minutes which has to be the quickest Red Sox-Yankees contest in years. Boston ended their 10-game, 11-day road trip (longest of the season) at 4-6.
Hiroki Kuroda (12-8, 2.96 ERA), who was a free agent that the Red Sox easily could have signed last winter, proved to be yet another wrong choice they have made in the last year-plus. He shut down Boston for eight innings, allowing one earned run on four hits with four strikeouts and no walks.
Rafael Soriano worked the ninth for his 31st save of the season and second of the weekend.
Curtis Granderson had an RBI double in the first since Beckett automatically has to give up at least one run every first inning. Derek Jeter (3 for 4, 2 doubles, stolen base) scored on a wild pitch in the third inning for a 2-0 New York lead.
The Red Sox had five total hits in the game and it would have been a shutout if not for the heroics of Adrian Gonzalez (15th of the season), who continued to pad his stats with a worthless solo homer in the seventh.
Boston returns to Fenway for seven games after an off-day tomorrow. We should all be thankful that they give us time to concentrate on the utterly meaningless Patriots-Eagles preseason matchup. There is a weird scheduling quirk since the Red Sox haven't played the Angels all season but Los Angeles (62-60, 3rd AL West) is in Boston starting Tuesday then the Red Sox are in Anaheim next week.
Aaron Cook (3-6) faces Ervin Santana (6-10) on Tuesday night (7:10 p.m., NESN), Clay Buchholz (11-3) gets Jered Weaver (15-3) on Wednesday night (7:10 p.m., NESN) in what could be a classic pitcher's duel and Franklin Morales (3-4) takes the hill against fellow lefty C.J. Wilson (9-9) in the finale on Wednesday night (7:10 p.m., NESN).
I'm just excited to see Mike Trout and see up close why the Angels have struggled so much lately when it looks like they put together a powerhouse team. They should benefit greatly from playing the Red Sox six times in 10 days.
After that, Boston takes on Kansas City in four mind-numbing games wrapped around this weekend.
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