Beltre & Vmart Bail Out Ex-Lacks

Victor Martinez went 5 for 5 with 4 (!) doubles to help his pitcher, a shaky John Lackey. His team, the Boston Red Sox, came back from a 4-0 deficit to Oakland to win Wednesday night's Fenway Park contest. Adrian Beltre, hotter than a pistol, went 3 for 3 with 3 RBIs to help the cause. The final score was 9-4 and Boston kept pace in the AL East, 5 games behind the Rays. John Lackey again was not as sharp as he'd like to be, going 6 innings and allowing 12 (!) hits and 4 earned runs, walking 2 and whiffing 4. Delcarmen, Bard and Hudson put up goose eggs on the top half of the scoreboard after Lacks left and the Fenway Faithful filed out the lovable old ballpark happy but still waiting for a dominant Lackey to appear....someday soon. Well, he didn't last night. He said this after the game...

“Honestly, it’s a little frustrating, ’cause I thought I did better than what some of the numbers are going to show,’’ said Lackey, who is now 6-3. “We won the game, so who really cares? I pitch to contact and I haven’t had the greatest luck with some of that,’’ Lackey said. “I’ve had a lot of balls on the ground that have gotten through, a few balls kind of fell in tonight. I’m winning games right now. I’m not quite pitching up to where I can be, so that’s kind of nice.’’

I guess we all have to get used to John giving up 4 or 5 runs every start (for now) but I DO hope he betters himself. Soon.

And now part 2, the latest Boston bad news. Mike Cameron, who looked like he was coming around at the plate, again is bothered by discomfort in his abdomen, on the opposite side from the muscle tear that caused him to miss most of the past five weeks. Here is the frustrated outfielder for the Boston Red Sox...

“I guess it’s just my time for shit to go wrong. My wife was asking me, ‘What’s going on? Why are you tossing and turning in bed all night long?’ It just kept going. It was abnormal for me to have those types of things I had when I was trying to go to sleep. I couldn’t play if I tried. It limits what I can do. So much of it is involved with everything that we do, from the stride to hitting to check-swinging to starting and stopping. It’s just not good, man.”

So the Red Sox are again without 2/3 of their starting outfield but they're playing good ball three out of every four games. If they keep this up they will be within striking distance of the Rays or the pin-stripers by the All Star break. Let's hope that happens. After the All Star break I hope to have Cameron AND Ellsbury back in the field. The team would be SO much better than they are now. Oh, and while we're in the bad news department, Josh Beckett still has back discomfort and Red Sox manager Tito Francona said that the coaching and medical staff will sit down with him to plan the recovery process.

That's the good, the bad and the ugly for this Thursday morning. Tonight at Fenway Park, it will again be Oakland-Boston baseball with Ben Sheets up against Daisuke Matsuzaka. As that old game show went, "will the real Daisuke Matsuzaka please stand up?" I hope he does. By the way, that show was called "To Tell The Truth."

Click on this post's title for more Sox stuff and as always, be well. Thanks for stopping by and I'll see you soon.