Game 130

Final Score:

Boston Red Sox 10, Anaheim Angels 7

It got a bit close at the end, but The Schill put the hammer down for 7 and 2/3 innings (3 ER, 4 Ks, 0 BB) and the Sox offense jumped on top of Angels pitcher John Lackey from the start - Johnny Damon got on after a fielding error by second baseman Adam Kennedy, Mark Bellhorn walked and Manny smashed a pitch into the rightfield bullpen. The Sox would go on to bat around in the first, scoring an additional run off a Bill Mueller double and Manny would make it 5 - 0 in the second with another bomb to center field. The Sox defense was once again sterling - excellent plays by Damon and Mueller stopped additional runs, which was important when Mike Myers gave up his first runs as a Red Sox - in the form of a grand slam in the ninth. Foulke, who had fortunately been warming to start the inning, came in and shut the Angels down for the night. Meanwhile, in the Bronx, the Yankees suffered their worst loss ever (to the Indians), with a final score of 22 - 0. I speculated with my roommate Ryan this morning about the size of the kittens George Steinbrenner had last night. The Sox are now 2.5 games ahead of the Angels in the AL Wildcard and 3.5 games behind the Yankees in the AL East...but as Robin put it, we're NOT talking about that. Not at all.

An interesting thing I noted about the strength of the Angels outfield, which was also mentioned by ESPN's Jim Caple earlier this year: you don't run against them. It's quite possible that the score of last night's game would have been closer to 15 - 7 if not for the Angels in the outfield

It's now September 1st. For the past few years (with the exception of last year, but last year was an exception in many ways), August has been about when what my friend Mike describes as the dessert goes bad (he's got an entire metaphor about the Red Sox season being like a meal at a decent restaurant that has bad desserts). This August, the Sox were 21 and 7 and have spent the last 16 days chipping away at the AL East lead. The year certainly isn't over yet by a long shot, but this has been a massively encouraging month. GO SOX! (Jose Guillen, Garrett Anderson and Vladimir Guerrero, respectively) - they screwed up the normal running sequence. For example, in the first inning last night after Manny's three run explosion, Orlando Cabrera hit a double. Doug Mientkiewicz then hit a single. Now, Cabrera is a decent runner and even in Fenway, it's possible to score off of a single from second - there's a reason why it's called Scoring Position. Not when the Angels are in town...you have to adjust your scoring by at least one hit to get in a run off of them.