Sox Win in Carbon Copy of Previous Night’s Victory, Starting Pitching On Fire

As much as I enjoy watching this team play high stakes pepper with Vernon Wells, it will be nice to see a 10 run rout as some point in the near future.

Regardless, the Red Sox have developed quite a penchant for winning games in their last at-bat, a trait often exhibited by the World Champion teams of 2004 and 2007. Amazingly, 8 of their 17 wins have been of the “Walk-Off” variety.

Going into this season, the major uncertainty (I hesitate to use the word “weakness”) on this team was their starting rotation. However, the rotation has been phenomenal recently, one of the few bright spots on this team.

In the past 6 games, starters have pitched 42 innings, giving up only 18 hits and 7 earned runs. This is good for an ERA of 1.50, and an amazingly low 3.86 H/9. A strong display of infield defense over this stretch (especially from Dustin Pedroia and the newly activated Mike Lowell) has helped the starters in this department.

While I love seeing games won by strong pitching, nifty defense, and clutch situational hitting, the offense needs to wake up soon. As lofty as those pitching numbers are, the recent offensive performance from most of the team has been very dismal.

Tonight, the Sox square off against A.J. Burnett, a pitcher who is usually tough when healthy, but has had a rough season thus far, allowing 52 baserunners in only 29.2 innings. No word yet on the status of J.D. Drew, Jacoby Ellsbury, or David Ortiz (who is clearly playing with a bad knee) but with these guys questionable and Kevin Cash back in the lineup, run support might be a scarce commodity yet again.