Boston Red Sox Perfect 'Penmanship

Toronto Blue Jays starter Brandon Morrow walked five Boston Red Sox batters in the second inning, leading to four Red Sox runs, helping Boston to a 7-6 victory last night. John Lackey pitched just well enough to win . He obviously didn't have anywhere near his good stuff but he recorded his fourth victory in the Boston triumph. But it was the Boston bullpen that was pivotal. The 7th, 8th and 9th innings were take care of by Hideki Okajima, Daniel Bard and Jonathon Papelbon in perfect style. It was goose eggs times three and that's the way it should be. Here's Mr. Bard...

“That’s how it’s supposed to go, that’s how they script it out, give the bullpen the lead in the seventh and have us shut them down from there,” said Bard.

And shut 'em down they did. Perfectly. The Sox creeped one game closer in the AL East standings because of dual losses by Tampa Bay and the Yankees. One step at a time, as they say. The Sox have won 6 out of their last 8 games even without the best starting pitching outings that we all expect, most notably those of Josh Beckett. His next start has been moved back to Friday because he tweaked his back while taking batting practice for the inter-league games soon to be played. Frankly, I HATE the AL/NL regular season games. Hey commish, save it for the damn World Series! Timmy Wakefield will take his place in the rotation...very temporarily. And today will mark another start for the enigma, Daisuke Matsuzaka. Who knows? Maybe he can avoid that one REALLY bad inning. He hasn't been able to do that in his last two starts. NOT EVEN CLOSE.

That's it for this early Tuesday morning, a cold one here in north central Connecticut. It feels more like early November than early May but I'm not complaining. It's just that I usually don't use the heat after May 1st. I guess there are exceptions to everything.

You can click on the title of this post for more Sox stuff courtesy of SI dot com and as always, BE WELL. See ya soon.