The Hard Way

The Boston Red Sox, losers of their last seven of nine, entered into tonight's contest against the Minnesota Twins who are arguably one of the hottest and most surprising teams in baseball up to this point. I wasn't exactly sure what to expect with the Sox seemingly going impotent against the Yankees this past weekend in the Bronx.

Luckily for the Sox, Dice-K had one of his better performances of the year. He was able to keep his pitch count down and battled his way to his 10th win on the season. One thing that was pleasing to my eyes tonight was the fact that no matter how hard Hideki Okajima tried to give the game away (as the bullpen has been doing this year) in the eighth, the Sox along with Okajima managed to see their way to the bottom of the inning with the games still knotted at 0.

Seeing that the pen has been a major disaster this season so far, Theo has decided to sent Justin Masterson down to the PawSox in exchange for Clay Buchholz entering back into the rotation this weekend. Sending Masterson down for the week to next 10 days isn't without a purpose. Epstein is planning on the young hurler having bullpen work take up 100% of his time while in Rhode Island with the idea he comes back to Fenway to help the floundering pen in the bigs. I think it's a smart move as the Sox really are sort of stagnant when it comes to arms for their middle relief. We'll see if it pays off likely after the break.

Speaking of bolstering middle relief, it's hard to say where or which direction the Sox will take, if any, before the trade deadline at the end of the month. I didn't think the Sox had a realistic shot at landing Sabathia, and I'm almost glad they didn't for the same reason I was happy they didn't sign Johan Santana. I'm still of the mind a trade for Dan Haren would have been a boon for the rotation now that Schilling seems to have been sent out to pasture, at least in Boston.

The next two nights the Sox will have their two best starters on the hill with Jon Lester getting the go tomorrow against Nick Blackburn and Josh Beckett closing the series against Livan Hernandez. The better game will probably be tomorrow night, but who doesn't want to see the battle of the dueling fatties on Wednesday? I know I do.