Dice Rolls Over Cleveland (Or: A Lesson For Lindsay Lohan)

In a Boston Herald article today, Jeff Horrigan makes an amazing (and timely) analogy between the Red Sox offense and the lovely Lindsay Lohan:  “For the last two months, the Red Sox offense has pulled a Lindsay Lohan with Daisuke Matsuzaka on the mound.  The hitters have been completely unreliable when it comes to driving folks home . . .  In nine of Matsuzaka’s last 11 starts the Sox have scored two runs or less.”  All of that changed last night. 

The shift has been made — and the Sox are starting to drive people home responsibly.  Lesson to Lindsay Lohan:  driving people home safely is very important.   Dice-K agrees.

Boston and Cleveland sent two of their aces to the mound, almost guaranteeing a low-scoring game and a lot of Ks. That is just what we got, with the Sox winning 1-0 over the Indians last night. Although he showed a little bit of a control issue early on, Dice-K pitched a great game overall, and kept the Indians offense to only four hits while striking out five. Sabathia was just as good, until Mike Lowell’s RBI single. Okajima and Paps came in to do what we expect them to (shut down the 8th and 9th innings), and the Sox won their 5th straight.

Although the Sox remain number 1 in the AL East, they are definitely helping the Yankees out right now with the Wild Card, knocking the Indians’ lead down to 4.5 games. I love the way the Sox are playing, and we head into a little Tampa Bay – Baltimore stretch after we leave Cleveland, which should give the Sox a little breather. It is looking more and more like the Yankees may make it to the playoffs via the Wild Card — let’s just hope that since they still have 8 games against Detroit, 6 against Boston, and 3 against Anaheim, the Yanks will stumble again.