Red Sox Bats Bail Out Buchholz...Boston Red Sox 12 Chicago White Sox 8

Boston Red Sox righthander Clay Buchholz, who had had three great outings in a row, was off his game Monday night at good old Fenway Park. But the Boston bats bailed him out bigtime. They scored 12 runs, 11 of 'em with two outs, as the Red Sox beat the American League team from Chicago by a score of 12-8. Buchholz was only able to go 4 2/3 innings and gave up 6 hits and 7 earned runs, but while that was happening, the Boston runners kept crossing the plate. Ramon Ramirez, the eventual winning pitcher, came on in the fifth. He was followed by Hideki Okajima's quick appearance, then Daniel Bard and Jonathon Papelbon in a non-save situation. The offense was led by a three run Mikey Lowell mammoth tater over everything and three hits by the second baseman, Dustin Pedroia. The Sox have been hitting the baseball lately, averaging 9 runs in their last 9 games, and Jason Bay had something to say about it...

“Games like this I think we’ve envisioned early on, everyone chipping in, not just one or two carrying the load,” said Jason Bay. "It couldn’t happen at a better time, but I’m still reluctant to say it’s going to last the rest of the year, but definitely, the way we’ve played in the second half, it’s nice to do what we’ve done.”

Here's his manager...

“It’s nice to have a feel that if they score first or if we’re down by a few that we have that feeling that we can put some runs on the board because we went through a period there where we weren’t doing that,” manager Terry Francona said.

Needless to say, starter Clay Buchholz was a dissapointed pitcher. He voiced his feelings after the game to the assembled media...

“I’ve got to go out there and put zeros in multiple innings in a row to even stand a chance to get past the fifth, sixth inning. I failed to do that,” Buchholz said. “I had three good starts leading up to this one and definitely wanted to have another one. It’s hard to go out there and not get a win when your team gives you nine or 10 runs to do it.”

Tonight at Fenway, it'll be Lester ready to face Floyd.

In other Sox news, it looks like Mets reliever Billy Wagner will NOT be coming to New England (WRONG..see the next post).. Among other issues, he said he does not want to end his career being a set-up guy. It would have been nice to have another lefthander in the 'pen, but we're OK there.

That's it for this still dark Tuesday. Enjoy your day and let's hope for more crooked numbers on the bottom half of the Fenway scoreboard tonight. You can click on this post's title for more Sox coverage from Sports Illustrated dot com and as always, BE WELL. See ya...soon.