September 13, 2007
...
No game scheduled ...
The Sox have 15 games left. They have spent 136 days in first place.
At 31 games above .500, they are at their high-water mark for the
season. At the All-Star break, they were 9 1/2 games ahead of the
Yankees, who on May 29 trailed by 14 1/2 games. They have lost 4 1/2
games off their lead since the break, but after playing at a .609
pace before the break (53-34), they have played .600 ball since
(36-24). They have stayed the course.
The Yankees,
after last night's 2-1 loss in Toronto, have 16 games left. Even if they do not
catch the Sox in the American League East, they are leading the wild-card race
by a comfortable 3 1/2-game margin over the Detroit Tigers, setting up a
possible (likely?) meeting between the archrivals in the AL Championship Series
for the third time in five years.
The Sox hope
Manny Ramirez will be back in the lineup this weekend. He worked out yesterday
at Fenway Park, hitting both in the cage and on the field, a strong indication
his strained left oblique muscle has healed sufficiently for him to return. The
Sox are 9-6 in the games Ramirez has missed, but with a .392 average (20 for
51), he is their leading hitter against the Yankees. His four home runs tie him
with Mike Lowell and Jason Varitek for the most against the Bombers this season.
The Sox have
ostensibly their three best pitchers, Daisuke Matsuzaka, 18-game winner Josh
Beckett, and Curt Schilling, lined up to face the Yankees, just as they did in
New York when they were swept. None of the three has good numbers against the
Yankees this season: Matsuzaka is 2-1 with a 6.98 ERA, Schilling is 0-2 with a
5.76 ERA and has given up eight home runs in 25 innings, and Beckett is 1-1 with
a 5.49 ERA.
Daniel Bard,
the Sox' first-round draft choice in 2006 who suffered through a miserable
season in his professional debut, will be among the minor leaguers playing in
the Hawaii Winter League, starting Sept. 29. He was 3-7 with a 7.08 ERA in 22
starts divided between Lancaster in the Single A California League, where he
began the season, and Greenville in the lower-level South Atlantic League. Bard,
who excited Sox officials by hitting 100 miles an hour on the radar gun last
fall, had horrific problems with his control, walking more than a batter an
inning (78 walks in 76 innings). He struck out just 47, but at 22, he is still
at an age and has the type of arm that make him a worthy reclamation project.
J.D. Drew,
who has just two home runs and 17 RBIs in the second half but is batting .270
with a .365 on-base percentage in that time, is on a mini-roll. In his last five
games, Drew has eight hits in 14 at-bats, a .571 clip, with three doubles, a
home run, an RBI, and seven runs.
