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Unsurprisingly, the New York Yankees have elected to start their Divisional Series tomorrow, so that means the Red Sox will play game 1 against the Angels on Thursday. Here’s what the schedule looks like:
Game 1: Thu @ LAA, 9:37PM
Game 2: Fri @ LAA, 9:37 PM
Game 3: Sun @ BOS, 12:07 PM
Game 4: Mon @ BOS afternoon (if needed)
Game 5: Wed @ LAA
Red Sox roster
Pitchers (10)
Jon Lester, Josh Beckett, Clay Buchholz
Jonathan Papelbon, Billy Wagner, Hideki Okajima, Daniel Bard, Takashi Saito, Ramon Ramirez, Manny Delcarmen
Positional (14)
Victor Martinez, Jason Varitek, Kevin Youkilis, Dustin Pedroia, Alex Gonzalez, Mike Lowell, Casey Kotchman, Jed Lowrie
J.D. Drew, Jacoby Ellsbury, Jason Bay, David Ortiz, Rocco Baldelli/Josh Reddick, Joey Gathright]
That leaves one spot up for grabs. The Sox could add Daisuke Matsuzaka to avoid pitching Lester on short rest in Game 4, or add another middle infielder, given the shaky status of Lowrie.
Now that we’ve clinched our playoff berth as the AL wild card, it’s time to scout our competition. First up, the LAAoA. If that ain’t a mouthful. The Red Sox have owned them in the postseason, but they are not as weak as they were last year. Here’s a quick look at how we stack up side by side.
Here we come down the stretch, and things are starting to look settled in the American League. It looks like it’ll be the Yankees, Tigers and Angels with the Red Sox taking the wild card. Here’s a sabermetric comparison of the teams as they stand now, in terms of runs above replacement (RAR).
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For those of you who watched the Red Sox come back last night in the bottom of the 9th with 2 outs, I have to say, it’s pretty clear that we caught a break with Nick Green’s walk. So the Angels do have a legitimate beef, according to PITCHf/x. It hurts to lose a game like that, but I don’t know that it should have caused dissension or even fighting in the clubhouse. Now Brian Fuentes has come out and accused Boston fans of intimidating the umpires. That’s a little too much – even Angels catcher Mike Napoli hestitated to support his closer on that one. At least Torii Hunter had a better attitude about the whole thing; it’s not just that at-bat, but both teams had plenty of opportunities to put the game away earlier.
Not to jinx or anything, but given the way the Halos are playing against Boston and NY this year, I’m really not too worried about them, come playoff time.
No wonder the Red Sox struggled and looked bad at times this postseason – many players were seriously hampered by injuries. Now that their season is over, the full severity of those injuries is revealed: Read the rest of this entry »
