Sports
October 15
To watch David Ortiz leg out a triple as he led off the bottom of the seventh inning at Fenway on Tuesday night was to know that something wasn't right with the Boston Red Sox.
The hit, Ortiz's first in four games of the American League Championship Series, bounded to the wall in the right field corner, sidestepping Fernando Pérez and rolling a good 40 feet into right-center as Pérez doggedly chased it down. For virtually any other player in baseball, it was a sure-fire inside-the-park home run, but the laboring Ortiz hobbled his way around second base and barely made it to third. For the Sox' DH, who was 0-for-12 in the series and hadn't homered — inside the park or out — since Sept. 22, it must have been frustrating. Even when he finally did something right, it still looked really wrong.
That one hit was a microcosm of the ALCS to date, as the Red Sox keep laboring while the Tampa Bay Rays continue to make it all look so easy, leaping out to a 3-1 series lead with another blowout win in Game 4. The Rays, who have outscored Boston 31-15 in the series, now have ace Scott Kazmir on the hill at Fenway ready to finish things tonight.
But Boston has been here before. Of the 10 teams in baseball history to win a seven-game series after starting out down 3-1, three have been the Red Sox in the ALCS. But it's hard to put any stock in historical background now, even considering that these very same Red Sox came back from down 3-1 against the Cleveland Indians last year.
Because really, these aren't the same Red Sox anymore. Manny Ramirez, who hit .409/.563/.727 in last year's ALCS against his (other) former team, is now out West, playing for a team that just suffered a fate similar to the one that may befall the Sox tonight. Mike Lowell, the MVP of last year's World Series, was scratched from the ALCS roster and is now out for the year with a hip injury. Ortiz continues to play, but one has to suspect injury problems with him as well. Jacoby Ellsbury, who was 7 for 16 in last year's World Series, is still hitless in this year's ALCS.
But perhaps the biggest concern is with Josh Beckett, the Red Sox' unhittable ace in last year's postseason, who continues to insist that his once-strained oblique is perfectly fine while continuing to post numbers that would suggest otherwise. He's winless in two starts this postseason, allowing 12 runs on 18 hits in nine-and-one-third innings. His velocity is way down and his pitch counts are way up. In Game 2, the Rays turned Beckett's last start into Tropicana Field's version of the Home Run Derby.
Beckett's not alone there. When the series moved to Fenway, the Rays were all over the supposed new ace Jon Lester — Rocco Baldelli, Evan Longoria, Carlos Peña and B.J. Upton all homered in Game 3. Game 4 was more of the same, as Longoria and Peña went deep again and Willy Aybar joined in too.
In the franchise's first LCS, Tampa Bay is now the only team in LCS history to score at least nine runs in three straight games, a testament to the Red Sox' pitching staff's pitiful effort. Meanwhile, Matt Garza and Andy Sonnanstine, 24 and 25 years old, respectively, have each turned in gems at Fenway, bringing the Rays to within one win of the World Series.
Now manager Joe Maddon turns to Kazmir, who allowed five runs after four-and-one-third innings in Game 2, to put the icing on the cake. Maddon made the decision yesterday to bump James Shields from his scheduled Game 5 start, meaning Kazmir will take on Daisuke Matsuzaka tonight and Shields, if necessary, will wait for Beckett on Saturday in St. Petersburg.
Kazmir, who missed April with a strained elbow, has been shaky for much of the year. His ERAs in July, August and September were 4.18, 4.02 and 5.19 — good, but not Kazmir good. With Matsuzaka on the hill against Kazmir for Game 5 at home, Boston certainly still has life, but it's a long climb back from down three games to one. No one knows that better than the Red Sox.
