It’s always been a contention of mine that when you start to see a ballclub winning in a variety of ways, it’s probably time to start considering the possibility that said ballclub is a darn good team. In this series alone, against a team that had come in winners of 9 consecutive games, the Red Sox jumped out to an early lead and staved off a ferocious comeback in game one, blew the doors off the Tribe in game two and came back to gut out a close, relatively low-scoring affair in game three.

Another compelling longview indicator is when a club starts to get contributions up and down the roster. A night after mainstays David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez led the way for the Sox, it was Edgar Renteria, John Olerud and Jay Payton that took center stage. The Red Sox won 5-4 last night because they were able to wiggle out of some tenuous situations early and then put up one run, then two more and one run again in the seventh, eighth and ninth innings respectively.

Indians starter Cliff Lee did a pretty nice job, as the only two Boston runs he yielded came on solo home runs by Renteria and Olerud. Those’ll happen though. The real goat for Cleveland was Arthur Rhodes, who continues to post shiny numbers year in and year out but I swear to you I have never seen him pitch well. Never. I don’t know where he accumulates some of the statistics he does but every year when I see him pitch you can bet that he will have a sub-1.00 ERA that will flash on the TV while he is warming up and then sure as the sun will rise the following morning, he will proceed to surrender a lead. If there are any Tribe, O’s or M’s fans out there that stop by, please, feel free to recount a time that Rhodes did in fact do a good job.

I suppose I’d be remiss if I did not mention that two other Tribe relievers, Bobby Howry and Bob Wickman, also blew this thing. It was a great win for the Sox, maybe the best all year when you consider the comeback nature of the victory, on the road to boot and on a night that Baltimore, New York and Minnesota also dropped games. The Sox now sit 1.5 games ahead of Minnesota for the Wild Card and just a game back of Baltimore for the Division lead. Cowboy Up, you Idiots! Or something?

*shrugs*

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Check out this piece in today’s Globe about Eric Van, one of SoSH’s best posters and a real hoot to spend some time with. I have had the opportunity to do just that at a couple of the SoSH Bashes. His posts over at SoSH were of such quality that John Henry himself hired him.

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Down in Pawtucket, Dustin Pedroia made his debut, hitting a double and notching an RBI. Roberto Petagine ran his OPS to 1.127.