Unlike the Rays, the Red Sox haven't changed a lick since the Yanks last saw them. Of course that was just two days ago in Boston. Both the Yanks and Sox swept two-game series on the road to start the week (the Sox doing so in Cleveland while the Yanks were in Tampa). The two rivals reconvene in the Bronx tonight with a rematch of the last series opener that saw Chien-Ming Wang outpitch and outlast Clay Buchholz as the Yanks won 4-1 behind Wang's two-hitter.... lire la suite
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Unlike the Rays, the Red Sox haven't changed a lick since the Yanks last saw them. Of course that was just two days ago in Boston. Both the Yanks and Sox swept two-game series on the road to start the week (the Sox doing so in Cleveland while the Yanks were in Tampa). The two rivals reconvene in the Bronx tonight with a rematch of the last series opener that saw Chien-Ming Wang outpitch and outlast Clay Buchholz as the Yanks won 4-1 behind Wang's two-hitter.
When the Tigers completed their sweep of the Yankees in the Bronx last week, it completed a 12-5 stretch that made Detroit's 2-10 start seem like nothing but an injury-plagued fluke. Since then, the Tigers have gone 1-6 against the Twins and Red Sox, throwing things into doubt once again. Since leaving New York, the Tigers have scored just 3.14 runs per game, with 10 of the 22 runs they've scored over that stretch coming in their lone win on Wednesday. In the other six games, they've averaged just two runs per game.
Having opened the second-half by sweeping the A's, the Yankees are now just three games out in the Wild Card picture, but they're still in third place. The next team on the ladder is the one coming to town for the next three nights: the Minnesota Twins. The Twins just took two of three from the Rangers, but with the Yankees' sweep, that closed the gap between the two teams to two games. With another sweep, the Yankees could take second place in the Wild Card chase, and the next team on ladder, the slumping Boston Red Sox (they were just swept by the Angels), are the next on the schedule.
Boston Red Sox
Boston Red Sox
Boston Red Sox
I was ready to fire up a post about how easy the Red Sox went down at the hands of the Rays, about how our White Sox put up more of a fight in their ALDS series. And then that happened. Five 2-out hits w/ RISP. That's a month's worth of work for the White Sox. There goes my ready-made post, even if the Rays are able to hold off the Sawks. At least we'll have baseball this weekend. I'll be rooting for the Red Sox in game 6, because the most exciting game so far this postseason was Danks taking down the Twins in game 163.
If there's an odd feeling to this weekend's four-game set between the Yankees and Red Sox in the Bronx, it's because the last time these two teams met this late in the season without either one of them holding first place in the AL East was September 1997, when the Orioles won the division, the Yankees won the Wild Card, and the Red Sox finished 20 games out in fourth place. Entering tonight's game, the second place Red Sox are 3.5 games behind the division-leading Tampa Bay Rays, with the Yankees another four games behind the Sox in third place.
The Yankees' current six-game winning streak has been extremely fruitful. By sweeping the A's and Twins, the Yanks have surged into second place in the Wild Card race and enter this weekend's three-game series against the Red Sox just three games behind both the Sox and the Rays in the AL East. Another sweep would put them in a tie with Boston for second place in the east and the Wild Card lead. A 2-1 series loss, however, would put them four games behind Boston, as many as five games behind the Rays (who play the Royals this weekend), and could even drop them back behind the Twins (who play the Indians). It's thus imperative that the Yankees at the very least take two of three this weekend. The question is: can they do it?
Boston Red Sox