The Red Sox need their starting pitchers to be dominant every night. When they are, like Josh Beckett's eight-inning, one-run performance Tuesday night, they can get by on a pair of home runs. A two-run shot from Mike Lowell and a solo homer from Bill Hall led to a 3-1 win.
On the other hand, when Jon Lester is suddenly off his mark, it's tough to get a win against even the lowliest of teams. The Red Sox have been having trouble scoring runs off starting pitchers over the course of this homestand. Look at what they've done against the six starters they've faced so far:
Armando Gallaraga: 4 2/3 IP, 1 ER
Max Scherzer: 6 1/3 IP, 1 ER
Justin Verlander: 7 IP, 3 ER
Fausto Carmona: 7 IP, 1 ER
David Huff: 5 1/3 IP, 3 ER
Justin Masterson: 5 IP, 1 ER
I'll give you Verlander — even Carmona — but this is not the greatest assembly of starting pitchers ever. The six of them combined have a 4.46 ERA on the season.
Yet, over the past six nights, they have posted a 2.55 ERA against the Sox. That's not going to get you back into the playoff chase. Imagine where we'd be at right now if not for a couple of improbable ninth-inning comebacks over the weekend?
Those wins were heady stuff, the kind of games that get you excited. Yet, a night like Wednesday, when the last-place Indians took advantage of Lester and poor defense to put nine runs on the board, was one of the most frustrating nights of the 2010 season.
We've been counting down the days to this weekend's four-game series with the Yankees, always saying "but you can't look past the Indians." But that's exactly what many of us did, looking past a team that had traded away four players in the five days leading up to the trade deadline. A team that has very few legitimate big league hitters in the lineup right now.
Instead of rolling through the Tribe, the Sox have lost two of the first three games with Cleveland and suddenly face a must-win game against the Tribe on Thursday. They'll face unknown Josh Tomlin, who only has two career major league starts.
That doesn't matter much right now. The Sox have yet to bust through against a starting pitcher this season. They had best do so on Thursday if they want this weekend in New York to mean anything.
