Sox Looking for the Sweep
The Red Sox have now won 4 in a row, and 7 of their last 8, and have only lost once at Fenway Park thus far (when King Felix blew his arm out). They are looking to sweep the Yankees at Fenway for the first time since 1990. They are on a roll like none we have seen in quite some time (last June I suppose when they kicked ass against the national league). Today, the Sox are sending Daisuke Matsuzaka against a rookie Yankee pitcher. It looks to be the classic ‘reverse lock’ where you fully expect the Sox to come out on top. But if Daisuke has a melt down like he did in Toronto, he may not escape it so easily facing this Yankee lineup. You don’t see a guy like Robinson Cano hitting at the bottom of the Toronto lineup.
Ideally, the Sox will jump out early with some runs to relax Daisuke out there. He’ll have a somewhat rested bullpen behind him, with Donnelly and Pinero being well rested and Papelbon available for an inning tonight. Varitek looks to continue being a Yankee killer and will be going for a third 2 hit game. We still haven’t seen much from Manny, so hopefully tonight will be his night. Coco is coming around (finally) though still isn’t driving the fastball the way we expect him to.
The Yankees, on the other hand, are still struggling with pitching. It’s hard to name 5 healthy Yankee pitchers, though they are getting Wang back on tuesday. Nonetheless, ARod has homered in every one of their wins thus far, and right now, are pretty much a one man team. The Red Sox should really stick it to the Yankees tonight and extend their AL East lead to 4 games (I don’t count Baltimore because you know they’ll be around .500 at best at the end of the season) and show them what it means to play against a good team.
Stumble it!
April 23rd, 2007 at 7:14 am
Did you make it to any of these games? I heard that the security was very stong and they tossed some of the drunk fans from the park. What do you think of this hightened security during Yankee games at Fenway?