The two strangest things in baseball have happend in the last two days.

1. Daryle Ward hit for the cycle. Daryle Ward!
2. The Red Sox have tagged the vaunted Oakland A’s staff for 21 runs in two games.

The Red Sox as a team have hit .378/.484/.595 against the A’s, and only Kevin Millar really isn’t hitting (seems to be a theme this year). Why?

To be honest, I have no idea why the normally unexplosive Red Sox offense struggled to score runs against such worthy opponets as the Rangers and Indians, but are hitting the Athletics thus far. Last night, a Bobby Crosby 3-run error didn’t help. Mark Redman walking Manny Ramirez to face Jason Varitek didn’t help either.

As a final aside, Kevin Youkilis has been very impressive in his short stint in the majors thus far. I don’t expect he will keep it up, but he has been pretty fun to watch so far.

And one more thing about Youkilis is that he has faced some pretty good pitchers. Redman, Hammond, Bradford, Hudson, Rincon, Halladay, Hentgan, Batista, Adams, Lightenberg, Lilly, Lopez, Zambrano, Baez, and Sosa. There are some crappy pitchers there, but even the bad ones tend to be tough on righties.

And it doesn’t get any easier. Tonight is Mulder vs. Arroyo.