FINALLY! Boston 5 Philadelphia 2...Cameron Released

Jon Lester started and won the Thursday afternoon game with the Phillies by a score of 5-2. The Phillies soon found out that Jon is Boston's version of Cliff Lee and he was just that yesterday. He went a strong seven innings and gave up ZERO runs on just a pair of hits. He was superb, hitting his spots with all his pitches while his devastating cutter shredded the opposition. Bard pitched the eighth and Jenks came in to finish off dem Phillies but couldn't do it and after giving up two runs and another hit, Tito came in to insert Papelbon. Bingo! Game over. Batting stars were Dustin Pedey Pedroia, with a tater while batting clean up and the captain, Jason Varitek, who was hitting fifth, doubling the tater output of Pedey. He's the captain, after all. But the biggest power performance of them all for the Boston club was a smash by Adrian Gonzalez that yanked Cole Hamels out of his glove AND the game. This was in the fourth inning and Hamels had been pitching lights-out. Thank you, Adrian. Here's Jon Lester on his terrific performance...

"You can’t worry about losing streaks, winning streaks, or anything like that. You’ve just got to go out and execute pitches.’’

The Red Sox will play their last three games on the National League path in Houston. They're sleeping soundly there right now. Here are your pitching match ups...


Fri. 1 at Hou 8:05 PM ET** NESN/FoxH** T. Wakefield (4-3) vs. B. Norris (4-6)
Sat. 2 at Hou 7:05 PM ET** NESN/FoxH** A. Miller (1-0) vs. J. Happ (3-9)
Sun. 3 at Hou 2:05 PM ET** NESN/FoxH** J. Beckett (6-3) vs. J. Lyles (0-3)

And lastly, Mike Cameron, a really nice guy who worked SO hard to come back from injury, has been released from the club. He didn't hit against lefties. Hey, JD Drew doesn't hit against righties so the problem IS with right field. Here's Tito...

"It's not a move we were looking to make necessary. We were trying to strike the right balance, buying guys as much time as we could to let them get on track a little bit. Mike obviously has a great track record and even last year, when he was hurt, he still raked left-handed pitching. The expectation coming into the year was that he would help us against lefties and it ended up being a tough adjustment for him to a role he wasn't that familiar with. We decided to go ahead and make the move now. The timing was right. We want to thank Mike for all his hard work and battling through the tough injury he had last year."

I and Red Sox Nation wish him luck. Have a great Friday as the Boston Red Sox try to string some consecutive victories together. The All Star break looms. Click the title of this post for more and as always, BE WELL.