Red Sox Shake & Bake Rays In A Rain-Shortened Game 9-1

Josh Beckett and rain falling from the skies helped the Boston Red Sox enjoy a five and one half inning rain-shortened 9-1 triumph. Let's hope Josh can keep it going like this. In all, he gave up one run, walked one and whiffed four in his five inning effort. It was his best start in a month and came at the exact right time. With Lester and Buchholz going strong, a normally dominant Beckett would make a formidible trio. Josh had this to say as the raindrops drifted to the ground...

“It was good,’’ Beckett said. “I feel like I did some things that I worked on in between starts and took it out there and executed it.’’

And here are the Red Sox pitching coach's thoughts on the Boston ace...

“I think the way he threw the ball tonight was consistent with the last four innings in Tampa and pretty much through the White Sox game,’’ said pitching coach John Farrell. “I wouldn’t single out the five-plus innings he threw tonight. I think it’s a continuation of what’s been happening. He’s commanding the bottom of the strike zone with his fastball more consistently,’’ Farrell said. “By leveraging the ball downhill, it also gives him the appropriate shape and finish to his curveball as well.’

All I know is he looked good, damn good. The Boston offense had a very potent third inning, scoring eight (!) times. From there, Beckett made it look easy. Here's our Youk...

“The biggest thing was to get some runs across for Josh,” Youkilis said. “It was good to get a win for him.”

There's a day-late day doubleheader sceduled for today with Buchholz ready to start the noon game and John Lester, who only threw 22 or 23 pitches on Friday before the deluge worsened, will toss the 5pm game. The weather at Fenway will be infinitely better than the last two games with NO chance of rain. Hey, that's what they said last night before I drifted off to sleep while watching a very wet Fenway Park. Coupled with a Texas Rangers loss, the wild card lead for Boston is now 3 games. Let's make it 4 1/2. TODAY.

I hope your Sunday will be a great one. Let's hope for two wins for the home team and as always, BE WELL. You can click on this post's title for more on the Red Sox from SI dot com. Thanks.