For once, Chris Bassett pitched a pretty good game against the Red Sox but it didn't matter - the Orioles lost anyway, 5-0, because Sonny Gray pitched an even better game. Sonny went seven complete innings with no runs and seven strikeouts, and the bullpen of Morán, Weissert, and Olds competed the shutout, 5-0 

Eli White singled in the sixth inning, scoring Sogie and Story, followed by a Connor Wong single that scored Duran. Isiah Kiner-Falefa singled in the seventh, scoring two more (Story and Duran) to make it 5-0 and taking a 3-0 lead in the four-game series. The Sox go for the sweep this afternoon.

Caddanne Rafaela, who's been out of the lineup so far this entire series, was officially placed on the IL with a right quadriceps strain. With Yoshida and Contreras also on the IL, three of the team's top hitters are not available coming down the stretch. It's going to fall on the recently reactivated Story and Anthony to take up that deficit, as well as Sogie, IKF, Gasper, and Jones. Story and Anthony, as well as Gasper and Sogard, are all in today's starting lineup, but Monasterio will be DH'ing for Jones and White will be batting cleanup for Kiner-Falela.

But not to worry - Payton Tolle (8-6, 3.23) takes the mound today. Tolle struck out nine Orioles in his last start against them back on July 20th, and if anything he's gotten even better during the month of August since that game. He'll be opposed by Baltimore's Kyle Bradish (7-12, 4.01), who's a career 2-6 against Boston although he was the starting pitcher in the July 22nd game that ended Boston's 15-game winning streak. 

He'll pay for that today as the Sox complete their sweep of Baltimore.

Georgia 63, Tennessee State 3

 

In its long and storied history, Georgia has had many great, hard-earned victories. This wasn't one of them.

The Tennessee State Tigers were overmatched and clearly out of their league. The Bulldogs scored 28 points in the first quarter alone, while the Tigers managed all of one field goal the entire game. Georgia didn't have to settle for a field goal the whole game, scoring TDs on nine of their eleven possessions. 

After opening their 2022 season against Oregon and 2024 season against Clemson, it felt good to ease into the season this year with a mismatch to let the team find it's groove.

The games was so easy the stats are almost meaningless, but Gunner Stockton passed for three TDs and 202 yards on 15 completions in 16 attempts. Nate Frazier rushed for three more TDs and finished the day with 72 yards. The game was so lopsided so early that coach Kirby Smart was able to bring in his backup QBs in the second quarter and Puglisi threw for 109 yards and one TD. Sophomore Ryan Montgomery, who passed all of one time last year, went 60 yards on two passes, including one for a TD. Freshman Hezekiah Millender passed once but it was a 17-yard bomb, and he also rushed for 22 yards on two carries. Freshman Jae Lamar rushed for 15 yards, including one rushing TD. 

I'm tempted to say Georgia won without breaking a sweat, but they did sweat. Everyone sweated. It was HOT today, 98° at kickoff. The Dawgs sweated, the Tigers sweated, the coaches sweated, the cheerleaders sweated, and even the fans sweated. It cooled off as a front passed through during the game, but it was pretty brutal in the first half.

Tennessee State already suffered one early season loss and are now 0-2, and their next three games are all of the road. You got to feel sorry for them.

The No. 3 Georgia Bulldogs start their season 1-0. The No. 2 Oregon Ducks struggled in their opener today against unranked Boise State, winning 24-27 on a fourth quarter TD. There's never any telling how the AP is going to vote, but they should drop Oregon down in the rankings for their poor performance and Georgia should be the new No. 2 next week. 

Other than that, there were no surprises or upsets in the scores this week (so far). Both No. 1 Ohio State and No. 5 Texas easily won their games, and the two teams play each other next week while Georgia has another easy game (on paper) against the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers. It's not impossible for the Georgia Bulldogs to be the new No. 1 team by this time next week.

Red Sox 1, Orioles 0

 

I'm still not sure how to consider last night's 1-0 win by Boston over Baltimore. One way is to consider that behind Ranger Suarez' masterful pitching performance, the Red Sox only needed one run, a first-inning Mickey Glasper solo home run, to win the game. Another way is to be concerned that the Sox could only score one run the entire game.

Ranger did indeed pitch a fine game - seven shutout innings with only one walk, three K's, and five hits, all singles. Both relievers went three up/three down with Whitlock allowing a runner on base in the eighth, but getting the next batter to hit into a double play, and Chapman ending the game with a K and two quick outs at first.

Gasper's HR was his eighth of the season, and his batting average (.283) is the best on the team among players with more than 40 plate appearances (Jahmai Jones is batting .471 in 34 at bats). He trails only slightly behind the injured Willson Contreras (left hamstring) in on-base percentage (.379 vs .384), slugging (.513 vs .516), and the two combined (.892 OPS vs .900). 

Outside of Gasper, who in addition to his homer also hit a single in the sixth, the Red Sox batters went 3-for-33 (.091) at the plate. Those three hits were singles by Duran, Story, and White. Nothing from Roman, nothing from Rutschman, nothing from Abreu, Sogard, or Durbin. We can't count on Ranger masterpieces every game.

The Yankees lost last night because they suck, and now, with 20 games remaining, Boston is once again 2½ games back from the top Wild Card spot and home field in the first round of the postseason. 

Sonny Gray (16-4, 2.82) pitches tonight, hopefully well rested after the Jedixson Paez debacle.  The Orioles haven't faced Sonny before in a Red Sox uniform, but he's a career 6-4 against them in a dozen starts for other teams, with 65 K's and only 58 hits in 65 innings. Gray's victim tonight will be the Oriole's 37-year-old, veteran pitcher, Chris Bassitt (6-4, 4.97). Bassitt has struggled against Boston, and the Sox rocked him for three runs on six hits, including an Abreu homer, back on June 3, and knocked him out of the game after three innings in an 8-1 win.

A win today would clinch the series for the Sox, and possibly make up a little more ground on New York in the Wild Card chase. Let's do it!

Red Sox 6, Orioles 5

 

In his first game back in Camden Yards since being traded to the Red Sox, former Baltimore Oriole Adley Rutschman hit a home run. Twice. Once in the first inning in his first at-bat and again in the sixth. He hit what should have been a single in the eighth but took second on a bad throw, and then Nick Sogard brought him home with a long ball into the stands of his own. Roman Anthony thought those home runs looked kind of fun and hit one of his own in the ninth. Five of Boston's six runs came on homers, with an RBI single in the seventh by Isiah Kiner-Falefa the lone exception.

Big Jake Bennett went six innings with seven K's and three earned runs. Aroldis Chapman uncharacteristically gave up two runs in the bottom of the ninth before getting the third out and ending the game with a 6-5 Red Sox victory and breaking a two-game losing streak.

The Yankees didn't play last night so the Sox (76-65) picked up a half-game on New York in the standings and now trail by 4½. Cleveland lost to those pesky Jays last night so Boston leads them by 5½ in the Wild Card race.

Ranger Suarez (5-4, 3.64) starts tonight for the Red Sox in the second of this four-game series. Ranger hasn't yet faced the O's as a Red Sox pitcher, but is a career 0-2 against them in four starts. Last year, he gave up five earned runs to Baltimore over 6⅓ innings, including a home run to Orioles third-baseman Coby Mayo, who's now in the DH spot.

The Orioles will go with Shane Baz (5-14, 4.01) tonight. On July 20, the Sox won the 14th of their historic 15-game winning streak against Baz, getting four runs (one earned) off him in six innings while he recorded six K's. 

The Yankees start a weekend series in San Diego tonight against the Padres (73-67). Let's hope sleep deprivation and jet lag work against them on the West Coast while the Red Sox earn some more AL East wins in Baltimore. 

 

Mariners 8, Red Sox 3

 

See? The Red Sox don't need no Jedixson Paez to give up eight runs in a game. They can do that just fine with Patrick Sandoval and Brayan Bello, who gave up four runs each. Together, Sandy and Bello walked five, while Seattle pitchers only walked one. 

Offensively, the Red Sox got hits, twelve of them, just as many as the Mariners. Both teams left eight players on base. Baseball mathematics: for Boston, twelve hits plus one walk minus eight left on equals three runs; for Seattle, twelve hits plus five walks minus eight left on equals eight runs.  

Fucking Yankees won last night, so the Red Sox (75-65) fall to five back from New York in the Wild Card standings with 22 games left to the season. 

Tonight, the Sox play in Baltimore, that Jewel of the Chesapeake, in a four-game series against the Orioles (69-71, last in the AL East). Big Jake Bennett (9-6, 3.27) starts the first game against the O's Brandon Young (9-3, 3.38). 

Way back in April, when the Red Sox sucked, Young and the Orioles beat the Red Sox, 10-3, although Young gave up all three Boston runs on seven hits, including an Abreu homer, over 5⅔ innings. Bennett posted neat identical numbers (three runs on nine hits, including one home run, over 5⅔ innings) back on July 22, a game which turned out to be the 15th win in Boston's historic 15-game winning streak. 

While tonight's pitching might be pretty evenly matched, Boston comes into the game with a team batting average of .250, seventh in MLB, while Baltimore has a .235 BA, fifth worse in baseball.  

The Red Sox need to win this series, if not sweep, to make up the lost ground in the Wild Card standings. New York will be San Diego for a three-game series this weekend against the Padres (73-67) and will surely pick up at least a couple of losses, so this is our opportunity to make a move toward the top Wild Card spot.

Mariners 9, Red Sox 6

 

Let's start with the obvious: pitcher Jedixson Paez wasn't yet ready to be called up to the major league. Sure, Sonny Gray needed a day's rest and there were no long relievers available in the bullpen, but those conditions don't make Paez ready to move up. The Chicago White Sox used him for a few innings of relief in the very earliest days of this season, so that wasn't his first big-league rodeo, but other than that, he's been down in the minor leagues working on his craft. Last night, he made his first starting appearance in the majors, and the Red Sox left him in the game for 3⅔ excruciating innings as he gave up eight runs on ten hits, including two homers. His ERA has ballooned to 18.90 and I believe he's already been returned to the minors. Sorry, Jedixson - the Sox used you to meet their strategic needs and hopefully you're not too traumatized or discouraged to continue your development.

(Just imagine for a minute being Jedixson having to take the mound at the top of the fourth, knowing you've already given up seven runs, you're obviously out of your element, the fans are booing, and your prospects as a future major-leaguer are evaporating with each pitch. But you still go out there, take the mound, and throw your pitches. It's not only your job, but the only out of the predicament is to go through it. How much of a relief it must have been when Tracy finally came out of the dugout to take away the ball after you finally made a second out that inning.)    

Now let's look at the positive side - if you take Paez's runs out of the equation, the Red Sox actually played a pretty good game last night. The Mariners homered in the first, the only run in the opening inning, and Mickey Gasper came right back and homered in the bottom of the first to tie up the game. After Paez finally left the game with the score 8-1, the Mariners only scored once more, while the Red Sox scored five runs. Even if you included the one run in the first inning, if you remove the other runs that Paez gave up in the second, third, and fourth, the score would be Red Sox 6, Mariners 2. 

I'm not saying that the Red Sox somehow "really" won the game, I'm just saying the only weakness on the team was a minor-league pitcher who obviously shouldn't even have been in Fenway last night. And extra kudos should go to the team for continuing to hustle even in the face of an 8-1 deficit. Wilyer Abreu ran all the way home from second base on a Seattle throwing error in the sixth inning to make the score 9-2. Eli White hit a two-RBI double in the seventh to make it 9-4. Jahmai Jones hit a two-run homer in the ninth to make it 9-6, and for a minute there, you'd be excused for thinking the Sox were going to make an incredible, probably record-setting comeback and actually win the game.

The Sox fall four back from New York in the Wild Card standings but still have a 4½-game cushion above Cleveland for the number two spot. The way the Wild Card playoff games are structured, it would arguably be easier on the Sox if they were the number three Wild Card instead of the number two. As the standings are now, the number three team would have to play three games in either Chicago or Houston, while the number two team would have to play three in Yankee Stadium. I like our chances in Chicago or Houston more than in the Bronx, especially after last weekend, but no team would deliberately tank games for a lower spot and risk missing the playoffs entirely. I'm just saying that it would be far from a disaster to end the season holding the number-three card. 

The Sox can win this home series with a win this afternoon (4:10 pm). Patrick Sandoval (1-3, 4.20) will start for Boston against Seattle's Bryce Miller (4-8, 4.12). Sandoval had a good outing in Boston's 0-1 loss to the Yankees last Friday, giving up one home run but only two other, scoreless hits over 5⅓ innings with seven strikeouts. He's a career 0-5 against Seattle in nine starts but also has more K's (57) against the Mariners than any other team in the majors.  

Bryce Miller is a career 0-4 against the Sox, so that evens it up a little bit. Last June, shortly before the midseason turnaround, Miller gave up a homer to Caleb Durbin in a 6-2 Red Sox victory. Durbin will be the sixth batter in today's starting lineup.

Red Sox 9, Mariners 8 (10)

 

The bounce-back game that amerika needed.

Trevor Story, in his second game back in the lineup after a three-and-a-half month stint on the IL, singled to deep left center in the bottom of the 10th for a walk-off RBI. Story had also hit a two-RBI double in the bottom of the eighth to bring Boston back from an 8-5 deficit to within one run. Roman Anthony, also back from a long (almost four month) IL stint, went 2-for-4 with a double in the fifth and a triple in the ninth. Rafaela hit a sac fly later that ninth inning to bring Anthony home and tie the game at 8 each.

More highlights: Mickey Gasper homered in the first inning, his 6th of the season, and Jarren Duran hit a two-run homer, his 19th, in the second. Many fans are upset with Duran, focusing on his low batting average (.207) and team-leading 148 strikeouts, but ignore the fact that he leads the team in stolen bases, is second in triples, third in home rums, and fourth in RBIs. You know who doesn't disrespect him? The Seattle Mariners. They intentionally walked Duran in the 10th to load the bases with one out rather than let him hit. Last night's game ended with Duran on third when Story crossed the plate to get the go-ahead run, but if the game hadn't already ended, Duran would have have scored in that play.

Payton Tolle went 5⅔ innings with six K's and four runs on six hits, unfortunately including one homer. The bullpen went from poor to superb as the game progressed, starting with Guerrero giving up three runs on three hits and one walk in only 13 pitches, and ending with Chapman closing the game in the 10th 1-2-3 with two K's.

And guess what? The Yankees, those cheating, low-life, sons of bitches, lost last night, 10-1, to the last-place L.A. Angels. Cheaters never prosper. The Sox (75-63) are back to three games behind New York in the Wild Card standings, with the entire month of September still to go.

Sonny Gray's turn in the rotation comes up today, but the Sox announced they're resting him up before the final stretch and the post-season, and that he won't start again until Saturday. No word yet as to who will take the mound for the Sox. The team has called pitcher Jedixson Paez (spellcheck HATES that name!) up from the minors with the September roster expansion, along with infielder Isiah Kiner-Falefa, and it appears likely that Paez will start tonight. 

The Mariners will start Bryan Woo (9-9, 4.36). Woo is 2-0 against the Sox in two career starts and has an ERA of 1.38 in games against Boston. Last year, he had a no-hitter going through four innings against the Sox in a game in Seattle on June 17, and finished with only one hit, no runs, and six Ks over seven complete innings. So Paez (or whoever) will have his hands full tonight.

Yankees 16, Red Sox 1

 

In football, when a team is getting blown out and acknowledges in the closing minutes that it has no possible route to victory, sometimes they pull their quarterback and star receivers and put in the backups and scrubs. Th opposing team usually responds by resting its starting QB too as there's no point in risking an injury, and instead of rapidly firing off passes to the sidelines to control the clock and score another TD, they run out the clock and take the win. Some teams (cough, Ohio State, cough) might try to run up the score in that situation to impress the polls, but that's generally considered a classless move.

Same thing in the NBA. A losing team might sit its starters in the fourth quarter and put in the bench players who don't otherwise see many minutes. The other team will slow down and run out the clock, and not have their leading scorers go for a burst of easy baskets against the weaker defense in the closing minutes.

Then there's the New York Yankees. This afternoon, when the Red Sox were down by a score of 10-1 in the eighth inning and their bullpen was depleted, they put infielder Andruw Monasterio on the mound as a relief pitcher as a sort of "white flag" acknowledging their defeat. In baseball, a team can't run out the clock like in football or basketball, but they can still try to end the game as quickly as possible, take the easy win, and give their players some rest. They wouldn't be expected to deliberately strike out, but they could bunt, trot to the bases, and certainly put in their substitute bench players. 

But that's not what the Yankees did. They kept their starters in, took full advantage of Monasterio's lack of pitching skills, and hit homer after homer and scored six more runs in that eighth inning, running up the score like TCU against Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow A&M.

Classless, vulgarian motherfuckers. May their whole team and fan base rot in hell.

This Red Sox suffered two low points this season (so far). The first occurred on June 24 when we lost a series to the hapless Colorado Rockies and fell to 32-46, 14 games below .500. The other was today, when we lost the third of four to the Yankees in the Bronx, the last two by a cumulative score of 25-3. The Elder Gods of baseball could have allowed that total score to be 28-3 to echo the Patriots' low point in Super Bowl LI before coming back to victory and signal that better things were ahead for the Red Sox, too, but they wouldn't even give us that.

A low point in today's low-point game occurred in the fifth inning, when obnoxious show-boater Jizz Chism hit a fly ball into deep center field and Ceddanne Rafaela made a spectacular diving catch. But the umpires ruled the ball had hit the ground and after a long-ass review by MLB headquarters located in, wait for it, New York, they ruled that it wasn't a catch. Shown from a different angle, it appeared that the ball may have indeed touched the ground, but only for a fraction of a second and after it was already in Ceddanne's glove and he had control of the ball. Yes, the picture above is an AI recreation, and the player shown is higher off the ground than Ceddanne was when he made the catch, but it's also a clearer and less blurry image than the stop-action frame of the actual play (and I don't have copyright to images of MLB games). 

But New York HQ gave the New York team the base hit, and two plays later, a two-RBI single brough Chism home (even though he never should have been on base to begin with). Fortunately, considering the final score, that one run didn't matter anyway, but all the momentum and confidence seemed to swing the Yankees way after that play.

Cheaters never prosper. New York may have won the game, but in the long run, they're still the classless, vulgarian motherfuckers in the Bronx.

What's more, today's game marked the return after long absences to the IL of Roman Anthony and Trevor Story. Both played well, Roman going 2-for-4 with a single and a double, and Trevor going 2-for-3 with a single, a double, and a run. However, a game that should have marked the start of a new offensive spark to the team will instead be remembered as an embarrassment and a new point of contention in the long history of Red Sox-Yankee animosity.       

So the damage is done. Boston (74-63) is 8½ games back from Tampa Bay in the AL East, and four back from the second-rate second-place Yankees in the Wild Card standings with 25 games left to the season. Three of those remaining games are later next month in Tampa Bay, but 16 are against sub-.500 teams, although the Sox do seem to generally play better against quality opponents, this weekend not withstanding. 

So anyway, that was humiliating, but all we can do is get back up, dust ourselves off, and get back to it. Tomorrow, the Sox return home to Fenway to host Seattle (64-73). Payton Tolle (8-6, 3.09) will start the first game against the Mariners' George Kirby (9-10, 4.02).

Let's flush this one down like a toilet bowl after a meal of diarrhea lettuce and get back to our earlier, winning ways.

Yankees 9, Red Sox 2

 

Absolutely disgusting. 

The loss was made all the worse because the Sox managed to get New York starter Max Fried off the mound after only 3⅔ innings, after Sogard had managed a solo home run off him in the third. Brayan Bello, on the mound replacing opener Alec Gamboa after 1⅓ innings, was wild in the third, giving up three runs with a walk, a hit-by-pitch, and a handful of singles, but after that he settled down, pitching two innings of three-up/three-down baseball. But the Yankees apparently rattled his cage with a double steal of second and third in the sixth inning and he wound up giving up a fourth run to New York before betting relieved.  

The wheels came completely off the wagon in the eighth, when the Yankees added five more runs and the Sox left reliever Raymond Burgos in the game despite the cavalcade of runs because why burn through another reliever on a lost cause?

Worse, the Boston offense was totally lifeless, getting only six hits all game. Two of those were in the top of the eighth, so up to that point the Sox were 4-29 at bat (.138). The two eighth inning hits - an Abreu double followed by a Contreras triple - resulted in a second Boston run, but the bottom of the eighth saw the five-run disaster.

Ugly loss, but like whatever. Can't win 'em all, especially on doubleheaders. The Yankees lead the series 2-1 for now, but there's another game today. 

This afternoon, Ranger Suarez (5-3, 3.35) takes the mound opposed by the Yankees' Will Warren (8-6, 4.39). In Ranger's last game in the Bronx, back on June 7 before the turnaround began, he struck out six and gave up only one run in 6⅓ innings (his turn in the rotation didn't come up during the late June sweep of the Yankees in Fenway). Boston lost the game after Slaten gave up five runs in the bottom of the eighth (sound familiar?), but Ranger was solid.  

The Red Sox knocked the snot out of Warren in Fenway back on June 26, scoring five runs off him on seven hits. Warren walked three and didn't get a single K on the Sox. That's the kind of performance we can use today.

A win by Boston today would result in a split of the road series and give Boston the tie-breaker in the event that the season ends with the Sox and the Yankees tied in the standings. A win today will also help wash the disgusting taste of last night's loss out of the mouths of the Sox and their fans. 

This is history, man. Series like these are the things that fans will talk about for generations. One last game in the Bronx for this season, one last time facing the pinstriped motherfuckers (at least in the regular season). Let's play some long ball!

Red Sox 6, Yankees 0

 

The mighty Boston Red Sox, the team that has scored more ninth inning runs this season than any team in MLB, turned a close nail-biter of a game into a laugher with a four-run ninth this afternoon. It was beautiful. Frame it and hang it on a wall.

Wilyer Abreu, the only lefty in the starting lineup, opened up the game with a solo homer in the first inning, and then Adley Rutschman made it 2-0 with some heads-up base running on a passed ball in the fifth. Big Jake Bennett pitched six shutout innings with seven K's, no walks, and only three hits to keep the Yankees scoreless. Garrett Whitlock returned from the IL for his first appearance since August 9 and threw a perfect inning of relief - no runs, no hits, no walks, and a strikeout. 

The ninth-inning fireworks opened with an Andruw Monasterio two-run double. Nick Sogard brought Monasterio home with a double of his own, and Ceddanne Rafaela brought Sogie home with a single to left center. It took Yankees reliever Ryan Yarbrough 39 pitches to make it through the ninth inning alone. 

The four ninth-inning runs meant the Sox didn't have to use closer Aroldis Chapman in the game, saving him for the second game of today's doubleheader. Instead, Jovani Morán was immaculate closing out the ninth with one K. no runs, no hits, no walks, and no drama.  

The Red Sox returned the favor of a shutout to the Yankees and now trail NY by only two games, with two left in this weekend road series.

I said in an earlier post today that Raymond Burgos will make his very first career start in game two of the DH tonight (third game of the series) but it now appears that reliever Alec Gamboa (1-0, 1,31) will start. Either way, the opener will probably only pitch for one inning and then turn the ball over to right-handed pitcher Brayan Bello (5-6, 4.68). Bello had a rough start to the season and the Sox kept the ball out of his hands for all the games against the Yankees so far this year, but he's improved as a long reliever and has a career 5-4 record against New York. His career 2.35 ERA against them (65 innings) is his best of any team he's started against more than three times..  

The fragile Max Fried (4-4, 2.81) makes a rare returns from the IL for the Yankees tonight for his first game since August 13. Back on April 22 (i.e., in the dark days before the turnaround), he crushed the Sox in Fenway with nine Ks and only three hits and no runs over eight full innings. However, he was also on the IL between May 13 and July 22 this year, and didn't start during the Red Sox' sweep of the Yankees in Fenway last June, which incidentally sparked the season turnaround. 

After his long stretches on the IL and the resurgent Sox' new prowess, it remains to be seen if Fried can still master the team like he did last April. But that's what games are for and what makes baseball, well, baseball. Stay tuned, don't go anywhere tonight (I don't care that it's Saturday), and cheer the Sox onto a sweep of the doubleheader.

It appears that the Sox will start the same righty-intensive lineup as game one against the left-handed Fried in game two, with Abreu again the only lefty in the starting lineup. It worked against Rodón, why not Fried?

Yankees 1, Red Sox 0

 

So New York scored a run, one run, and beat the Red Sox in the first of this weekend's four-game series. Big deal. Doesn't mean shit. Yankees still suck.

Game one was always going to be a hard one for Boston. New York was starting their ace, Adolph Shitler, while the Sox rotation had their fifth starter, Patrick Sandoval, open. Sandoval pitched well - spectacularly for a fifth starter - and pitched a game that statistically was nearly identical to Shitler's. Sandy threw seven K's to Shitler's eight, and gave up three hits, compared to Shitler's two hits. Sandoval stayed in the game for 5⅓ innings, one out less than Shitler's 5⅔ innings, and threw 96 pitches to 23 batters, compared to Shitler's 102 to 24. 

If the very best the Yankees can throw at the Red Sox is almost statistically indistinguishable from the effort of Boston's worst starter, I feel good about the Sox' chances in the rest of this series. 

Both teams loaded the bases in the sixth, and both team's relievers ended the inning without allowing a run. That was a tense inning.

So the Red Sox are now three back from the Yankees in the AL East and the Wild Card standings, with three games left to play in this series and two of them are in a double-header today. Hope you didn't have plans for today.

Big Jake Bennett (8-6, 3.49) will start the first game against the Yankees' Carlos Rodón (4-2, 3.15). Back on June 27, Bennett got the win in a 4-1 game in Fenway against the Yankees, a game that arguably kick-started the Sox' amazing mid-season turnaround. Big Jake's numbers weren't spectacular in that game - three K's, three hits, one run - but he lasted 6⅓ innings and benefited from a pair of home runs by Yoshida and Seigler. Neither batter is in the lineup today - Yoshida's on the IL with a hamstring injury and Chad Tracy is starting the right-handed Nick Sogard (.257) at second today instead of the left-handed Tony Seagulls (.250).  

The lefty Rodón gave up a two-run single to the right-handed Caleb Durbin the day after Big Jake's win, as Boston completed the sweep of that series. The Durbinator (.255), who also stole two bases in that game, is most definitely in today's lineup, and we're counting on him for big things today. In fact, Tracy is going all-in with righties today, platooning as many into the lineup as possible, including putting Eli White (.259) into left field instead of the left-handed Jarren Duran (.219). Wilyer Abreu (.255) is the only lefty in this afternoon's starting lineup. 

Max Fried (4-4, 2.81) will return from the injured list to start the second game of today's doubleheader for the Yanks against Raymond Burgos (0-0, 2.70) in his very first career start and opening for Brayan Bello (5-6, 4.68). But who's got time to worry about that now? One game at a time, baby.

Marlins 4, Red Sox 0

 

Sonny Gray gave up seven hits and two runs over five innings. Reliever Wyatt Olds gave up two more runs. The Red Sox batters went 5-of-31 at the plate with nothing more than singles, and left nine runners on base. They won the series in Miami, but lost the finale.

The loss snapped the five-game win streak, but no reason to freak out. Boston (73-60) is still 7-3 in their last ten, and has the day off today. 

The big series in Da Bronx starts tomorrow - four games, including a Saturday double header, against the Yankees, who now lead Boston by 2½ in the Wild Card standings. This series is crucial for the Sox's playoff hopes. They currently enjoy a comfy 5½-game cushion in the Wild Card with 29 games left to play and most likely will qualify for the playoffs. But the format for the playoffs now has the number two Wild Card team playing all three of the games on the home field of the number one Wild Card team. Three games in three nights, and the first team to win two goes on to the next round and the season's over for the other team. 

I get it - MLB wanted to speed up the first round so that the division leaders aren't waiting around for too long to begin their League Championship Series. But requiring the number two team to win two of three on the number one's home field seems like a pretty tough requirement to advance. So much depends on the standings.

The first game of this weekend's series on Friday night has the highly questionable Patrick Sandoval (1-2, 4.54) against New York ace Adolf Shitler (11-6, 2.16), who currently enjoys the lowest ERA among  American League starters. Good, let's get that punk out of the way and over with at the start of the series. If the Sox can get through Shitler in game one, the Yankees still have an advantage with a bullpen ERA of 3.02, best in MLB and higher that Boston's 3.24, fourth in MLB, although the difference is not as pronounced and Boston's closer Aroldis Chapman has an ERA of 1.81, while New York's David Bednar has an ERA of 2.35. 

New York will have the pitching advantage in the game, but the Yankees' team batting average (.231) is the third lowest in all of MLB, while the Sox' .250 is sixth highest.

Then there's the intangibles. Yankees suck and Red Sox rule, and dirty water stains pinstripes every time.

Let's go! Season-defining series in the very belly of the beast. All the marbles. Bring it on!