BOBBY KIELTY

A POWERFUL CHAMPIONSHIP TEAM
The Red Sox completely
sweep the White Sox

August 26, 2007 ... As if the Red Sox needed anything else to go their way on a day they completed a historic four-game sweep of the White Sox, 11-1, to take a 7 1/2-game lead over the Bombers with five weeks and 31 games to play.

Even before the Sox won by scoring double-digit runs in four straight games for the first time since 1950, and the Yankees lost in Detroit, Clay Davenport of Baseball Prospectus, simulating the rest of the season a million times, had the Red Sox making it to the playoffs 99.6 percent of the time, with their chances of winning the division at 95.8 percent. Those numbers only got better on the eve of what had once loomed as a showdown series starting tomorrow night in the Bronx, with the Yankees still having to play the Tigers again tonight.

The Sox, to a man, shied away from talking about the possibility of putting away the Yankees this week. Maybe it is too early to be talking about a magic number but at the moment it's 25, meaning any combination of Sox wins and Yankee losses totaling 25, and Boston is a division winner for the first time since 1995.

J.D. Drew homered for the first time in more than two months (51 games and 166 at-bats). Newcomer Bobby Kielty, filling in for sore-backed Manny Ramirez, started a rally with a bunt, then homered for the first time in almost a year. Ortiz hit his third first-pitch home run in three days. And Tavarez made the Sox look brilliant for giving him the start originally scheduled to go to Jon Lester.

The Red Sox outscored the White Sox in the series, 46-7, almost matching the 46-10 beating the Bears laid on the Patriots in Super Bowl XX. The Sox completed their first four-game sweep here since Aug. 3-5, 1968, at old Comiskey Park, when Hawk Harrelson was wearing Nehru jackets and batting cleanup for Boston, instead of biting his tongue and broadcasting for the bad-beyond-belief White Sox.

When this trip began, the Sox were four games ahead of the Bombers, matching the narrowest lead they've held over the Yankees since April 24. By taking six of seven from the Devil Rays and White Sox, with Jonathan Papelbon striking out the side to end yesterday's game, the Sox have tacked on 3 1/2 games, giving them their biggest bulge since Aug. 2, when they led by eight.

Tavarez made a spot start Aug. 19, his first in 18 days, to allow Francona to line up his rotation the way he wanted, and gave up just two hits in six innings to the Angels in a 3-1 loss. Given the start yesterday because the Sox preferred to send Lester down in order to have a second lefty (Javier Lopez) in the bullpen, Tavarez gave up a solo home run in the second inning to Jermaine Dye, matching the home run Drew hit off Vazquez in the top of the inning, but gave up just one more hit and did not allow another runner beyond first base in his six innings of work.

Kielty followed his four-RBI performance Saturday by dropping a bunt that curled inside the third base line for a hit with one out in the fifth. Coco Crisp followed with a base hit, and though Julio Lugo then forced Crisp, Lugo subsequently stole second and scored when Pedroia lined a full-count pitch to center for two runs. Ortiz hit Vazquez's next offering into the center-field seats, and it was 5-1.

Drew walked to open the sixth and two outs later, Kielty, hitting from the left side, slugged his first home run since last Sept. 19, when he was with Oakland, and a four-run eighth, fueled by two White Sox errors, had the Sox making history while leaving the White Sox bewitched, bothered, and bewildered.

Julian Tavarez was credited with his first win in his last eight decisions, a span of five losses and two no-decisions. Tavarez, now 7-9, dropped his ERA to 4.84 by allowing just one run in six innings, that coming on Jermaine Dye's 25th home run. Tavarez, after mentioning his wish to go back to the World Series, was asked if he remembered being on the losing side against the Sox in 2004, when he gave up a two-run homer to Mark Bellhorn and took the loss in Game 1.

David Ortiz, who hit three first-pitch home runs in this series, has now hit six home runs in first-pitch at-bats, most in any count this season. Last season, when he hit a club-record 54 home runs, he hit 11 first-pitch homers, the most he hit in any count in 2006, one more than the 10 he hit with a full count.

The Sox became the fourth team since 1900 to score 10 or more runs against the same team four straight times. The St. Louis Browns did it twice, in 1920 and '22, and the Rockies did it in 1996. The Red Sox scored 10 or more runs in four straight games overall for the first time since June 2-5, 1950, when they went 11, 11, 17 and, 12 against the Indians and White Sox. The 46 runs scored by the Red Sox were the most in a four-game series since they scored 46 against the Browns in 1949.