Don't look now but the lead in AL East is down to 8 games as The Red Sox continue to play .500 ball over their last 40 games. With The Royals in town, the Sox had a chance to get on a long winning streak and with the White Sox coming to town this weekend, expand there lead. However, the Sox continue to frustrate, banging out 12 hits last night but only scoring 3 runs, while they gave up 9 runs. While over in the Bronx, The Yankees are hot again as they got a great effort from Mike Mussina last night 7IP 1ER, and managed to win the game in extra innings after surviving another awful performance from Kyle Farnsworth. They scored the tying run in the 9th on a balk, and then in the 10th won it after A-Rod was hit by a pitch, went to 2nd on a wild pitch and scored when Robinson Cano singled him home.
The Sox are 4-6 in their last 10 games, and have started off this 11 game home stand against the Blue Jays, Royals, and White Sox all sub .500 teams with a 3-3 record. The team has continued to get solid pitching, and they are getting plenty of hits, 63 hits in their last 6 games, only once have they failed to get 10 hits in a game on the home stand. The most frustrating thing has been the lack of the key hit this season, or the ability to come from behind. I think the Sox when down after 8 innings, have only come back to win once. During this home stand the Sox have left 84 runners on base in just six games so far (Avg. 14 a game), that is just not getting the job done, Add in the Tigers series before the break and they have left 141 runners on base in their last 9 games . To continue on the lines of not being able to win a tight game of the Sox's last 9 losses, 7 of them have been by 1 run. On the season the Red Sox are 14-13 in one run games,
in their last 9 one run games they have a record of 1-8.
With the Yankees not facing a team with an above .500 record until August 10th, a span of 22 games, they are in the right spot to make a huge move and get back into the AL East race. Over that same time period, the Sox will play 10 games against teams above .500, this includes a west coast road trip to play Seattle and Los Angels along with a trip to Cleveland. Assuming the Sox play .500 ball over this stretch and the Yankees play .666 ball, the lead could be down to 4 or less with a month and half of the season remaining.
I hate to be a pessimist, but if the Sox don't figure out how to get the runners home once their on base, the dog days of summer are going to be awful hot for the Boston 9. The race isn't over, the next 22 games will tell us a lot about both teams. Let's hope we don't have to relive 1978.
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