A Red Sox rebound appears a most unsafe bet at this juncture. Yet of all the long shots out there, no team has a more obvious path back to relevance than the Yankees’ rivals.
A dominant start by Jon Lester. Stellar relief pitching. Early offense. And in what felt like a snap of the fingers, it was Red Sox 4, Yankees 1 yesterday at Yankee Stadium.
“We still have it. We’ve got it,” a chipper Bobby Valentine said. “We just haven’t used it as often. We’ve saved it up.”
“Any time you’re in position where you’re down but you’re not necessarily out, we’ve just got to keep grinding away, showing up every day and playing hard,” Lester said. “I don’t think this team has ever been criticized for its lack of effort.”
Well, no, not this Red Sox team. Last year’s club is a different story. But no need to go there, right? If these Red Sox, now 59-62, are to have any chance at a late-season run to the playoffs, it starts with Lester and his fellow fried chicken and beer enthusiast Josh Beckett pitching up to their resumes. Beckett takes the ball in tonight’s series finale against the Yankees’ Hiroki Kuroda.
As the Yankees’ Nick Swisher said following yesterday’s game: “We got the real Jon Lester today.”
The lefty allowed just five hits and two walks in his seven innings, striking out four, and after escaping a first-and-second, none-out jam in the bottom of the first, he didn’t allow more than one base runner in any of his six final innings. His command of his cut fastball showed in the 10 groundouts the Yankees hit to the left side of the infield, with eight of those hit by right-handers.
“Whenever he needed to make a pitch, he made a big pitch,” Red Sox catcher Ryan Lavarnway said.
Before the game, I asked Valentine whether personal memories of past late, great rallies — his 2001 Mets and his 2008 Chiba Lotte Marines came to mind — helped him get through his current campaign.
“Each year is different,” Valentine responded. “You have different belief systems that are in place for different reasons. You think some of the past helps in a blind faith that it can happen.”
By “blind faith that it can happen,” Valentine meant an understanding that statistically, a Red Sox rebirth is possible.
These Red Sox certainly don’t feel like any of Valentine’s Mets teams, all of whom overachieved. Statistically, however, when you have a team like these Red Sox that has underachieved, you can’t be shocked when they eventually find themselves.
Lester, in particular, might have turned a corner. Three of last four starts have now been quality starts (a minimum of six innings pitched, a maximum of three runs allowed), and a look at his peripheral numbers like strikeouts and walks indicate that he probably was suffering from bad luck earlier in the season.
“I think a lot more balls that are hit, have gotten hit for hits,” Valentine explained.” A lot of them, they were well-placed. Sometimes that happens, and sometimes that just stops.”
Said Lester (7-10), who lowered his ERA from 5.20 to 5.03: “Everything looks good when you get good results. Everything comes back to getting good results and winning baseball games.”
Which is why Valentine declared, before the game: “I’m not doing a good job. I didn’t get paid to do anything other than get us to the playoffs, win a lot of games, be in the thick of things right down to the end. The team I’m managing is not there. It’s simple. So my job has not been a good job.”
The odds remain high against the Red Sox, who face fierce competition all over the American League. They at least know how it could happen, though.
“I think a lot of players I talk to really want to believe,” Valentine said. “We’ll see.”
He didn’t sound awfully convincing. Why should he have? Nevertheless, if Lester keeps pitching like he did yesterday, then the Red Sox might at least get in the thick of things.