What a Road Trip!
Even after last night’s loss - Boston is playing at a six hundred clip, with the best record in the American League. They are fourteen games ahead of five hundred, a remarkable turnaround from April, when they were eight games under five hundred only a couple weeks into the season. By my count, that’s plus twenty two since then, or 40-18 overall.
At the start of June, there was no way I could have pictured this, as the current month had them scheduled for a potentially disastrous nine game AL East road trip, with successive series in New York, Toronto and Tampa Bay. Going into the Bronx about ten days ago, I would have been pleased with a five hundred record on that trip. But as we all know now, the Sox swept the Yankees, then hammered the Jays, banging out 35 runs in three games, and even managed to take two of three in Tampa, thus coming home to Fenway after having gone 8-1 on the road.
Boston’s recent success has mainly come via the offense. Gonzalez is still tearing up the AL, leading the majors in RBIs, and now batting almost three-fifty. (It will be interesting to see how he performs when San Diego comes to town tomorrow night.) Papi was a terror on the road trip, with four home runs and thirteen RBIs, while raising his average to three-twenty. Pedroia came back from his MRI with a smoking hot bat; Youk and Ellsbury had timely hits. In fact, the whole lineup was contributing, which was the main reason the Sox scored eight or more runs in seven games this month.
One downside has been that the pitching has been less than spectacular of late. Lester tossed eight strong innings in Toronto, and Beckett came very close to a perfect game down in Tampa. The Rays’ only base runner came on a slow grounder down the third base line that Youk could not get to in time. An infield single left Beckett with a one-hit shutout, on fewer than one hundred pitches no less. He’s been on fire this year, and I only hope he stays healthy. It’s funny, but Beckett’s great seasons have always come in odd-numbered years, and yes, 2011 is an odd number. And I guess Wake had a good outing in Tampa, but it came on the night that Shields shut the Sox out. Often though, the starters have allowed a bunch of runs, but were then bailed out by the bats. Only Beckett is carrying an impressive ERA right now. Even Lester is giving up about four runs a game; just like last night.
But speaking of staying healthy, the first game in the home stand was a reminder that teams need good luck in order to succeed in a regular season than runs for six months. In one game Crawford came up lame legging out an infield hit, and Youk got sick and had to leave the lineup. The same day, the Sox had placed Lowrie on the disabled list; he got banged up colliding with Carl Crawford (didn’t that same thing ruin Ellsbury’s season last year?) a couple weeks ago, and hasn’t healed. So any team, including the Sox, is always a couple freak accidents away from having their season go into the tank. Think about how everyone kept away from injuries in the championship years, and contrast that with last season.
Anyway, things are looking brighter right now. The gloom of April seems to have passed, and the team is playing up to this year’s high expectations. Let’s hope they stay hot as we move into summer. Go Sox.