I'll make this short: the Sox are scuffling. They've lost 8 of 13 in June while the Yankees have won their last nine in a row. The 14.5 game lead has been trimmed to 7.5 games on June 15. Time to panic? Not really. The Yankees are currently playing above their heads and given time (and tougher competition) they'll come back to earth once their bullpen is counted on in a series of close games. Conversely, the Sox are doing everything badly; terrible hitting, inconsistent pitching and shaky defense. This is not the real Red Sox, version 2007.
The Red Sox lost their last two games, 12-2 and 7-1 to the Colorado Rockies at Fenway. Schilling and Beckett both got shelled which was surprising. The Rockies can hit but there's no reason why the Sox should be held to 5 runs against them in a three game series. This weekend, Barry Bonds and his accompanying circus come to town with the San Francisco Giants. I'd like to see the Sox take two out of three and get back on track so to speak. The Yankees host the Mets (who've lost nine of their last 10). Clemens is going tonight. In a perfect world, he'd get shelled while Freddie Krueger (Julian Tavarez) outduels Barry Zito-probably the most overrated pitcher of the last 10 years.
Nothing is ever easy in baseball and I guess as Red Sox fans we should know better than to count on a division title in May. The Yankees still own most of the free world so they can never be counted out. Plus, it makes it more interesting if they're in it for most of the season. I'm not losing confidence, every team goes through bad spells but the fact that we have three automatic outs in our everyday lineup-Lugo, Drew and Crisp-is pretty scary. Regardless, I'd take Schilling, Beckett, Wakefield, Dice-K and Tavarez/Lester over Petitte, Clemens, Mussina, Wang and Clippard any day of the week. And Papelbon vs. Rivera is not even close anymore.
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