Sonoma Dave's Giant Red Sox Blog: Lester's Cheeseburgers

Friday, September 3, 2010

Lester's Cheeseburgers

Jon Lester was serving up singles and doubles in the first 2 innings like it was Mickey D's at lunchtime. The 1st inning looked like this: ground (beef?) out, single, single, HBP (hit by a pickle?), double, K (ketchup?), ground out. This resulted in 4 runs, after Lester had been staked to a 1 run lead courtesy of a Scutaro single and an Ortiz double. In the top of the 2nd, Nava singles and Kalish doubles him home, score- Sox 2, O's 4. The 2nd inning for the O's went as follows: fly out, K, single, BB, single, K; 1 more run, score now Sox 2 O's 5. That's 4 single cheeseburgers and 2 double cheeseburgers. That's when Lester settled down as he mowed down the next 10 Oriole batters. The Orioles came back to life with 2 singles and a walk in the bottom of the 6th, but could not capitalize on them, score now 5-3, Orioles on top. Lester ended up with 10 K's for the night. Then the Sox bats started to show a pulse. McDonald's single, a Scutaro HR, a JD Drew BB, a V-Mart double, an IBB to Ortiz, and a Beltre HR, (heavy relish? no, who puts relish on a burger?), give the Sox 6 runs in the inning and a 9-5 lead which they would not relinquish, and gave Lester his 15th win against 8 losses, with a 3.27 ERA. Bard came in to work the 7th and the 8th innings and gave up a rare run on a double and some small ball. Papelbon worked a 1-2-3 9th inning to garner his 34th save of the season. Happy Meal goes to the Sox.

It wasn't pretty though, 21 hits total between the 2 clubs, but it was a badly needed Sox win over the Orioles, Buck Showalter at the helm or not. The resurgent AL East doormats had gone 17-10 since Buck's arrival after spending most, if not all of the season in the basement with a sub-.400 winning percentage. Yet despite their low achievents this year, they still found a way to beat the Sox 7 times so far.

Technically, the Sox are still in this race for the Wild Card spot. They are 8 games behind the Yankees and 7 games behind the Rays, but still have 3 games against Tampa Bay and 6 games against New York left to go before the regular season is over. The everlasting optimist in me says it can be done.

Sox 9 Orioles 6 BOX SCORE