Postgame, Red Sox 6-0: Back up from the Red Sox clubhouse and two things are going on. One, the tarp is being pulled on the field in preparation for the rain in the forecast Sunday.
Also, the Joe Girardi press conference is on the TV above us. He is getting peppered by reporters, and doesn’t seem very pleased with where it is going.
“I am done talking about Jorge,” Girardi just said.
He is now talking about the 6-0 loss, which can’t make him feel much better.
The Red Sox clubhouse, meanwhile, had upbeat music, Adrian Gonzalez discussing his Ichiro Suzuki impression, Jason Varitek joking about winning the Triple Crown and Josh Beckett speaking very matter-of-factly about another solid start.
Tale of two teams right now. And one would have to like Boston’s chance at a sweep with Jon Lester opposing Freddy Garcia in the finale. First pitch for that one is 8:05 p.m., and we will be here at Yankee Stadium once more to carry you through.
Final, Red Sox 6-0: The Yankees are limited to seven hits (six of them singles) by three Red Sox pitchers, Josh Beckett being the one who matters most.
Beckett has dropped his ERA to 1.75 and has 14 1/3 scoreless innings against New York this year.
The Yankees, who just appear listless, lose for the eighth time in 11 games and do so with their ace on the mound. Now, they have to face Jon Lester.
Heading down to the Boston side, but keep an eye on the New York side of things. Jorge Posada and all that stuff.
Back up in a bit.
Mid 9th, Red Sox 6-0: You would have to search pretty hard for negatives to this game for the Red Sox.
One potential issue going forward is the hip of Kevin Youkilis. This is just speculation right now, but Youkilis was a big gimpy after a groundout earlier in this game and J.D. Drew just pinch hit for him in the ninth.
Just something that he may have to deal with all season.
Youk’s departure means that Jed Lowrie goes to third. Jose Iglesias is in at shortstop. Also, Rich Hill is pitching the ninth.
End 8th, Red Sox 6-0: Mark Teixeira just broke a slide of 31 hitless at-bats against the Red Sox with a single in the eighth.
I somewhat doubt that’s enough to get anyone smiling in the Yankees’ dugout.
The Red Sox are three outs from winning for the ninth time in their last 12 games against New York, which is three outs from losing its eighth game in 11 overall.
Mid 8th, Red Sox 6-0: Nothing for the Red Sox against Luis Ayala in the eighth. Matt Albers will go out for a second inning of work. Terry Francona has to love it whenever he can rest the bulk of his bullpen, which has had an interesting last week or two in terms of its usage.
End 7th, Red Sox 6-0: The Yankees are now 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position after stranding Nick Swisher at second base in the seventh.
And with that, the exodus has begun. Fans have been leaving games here early during this little slump by the Yanks. Pretty dormant place right now, and a lot of uncertainty surrounding Joe Girardi’s club.
Mid 7th, Red Sox 6-0: We can talk about Adrian Gonzalez’s home run binge until we are blue in the face, but how about a nice hand for Jason Varitek.
Varitek is 6-for-20 (.300) with three walks over his last six starts. He had a four-pitch walk in the rally in the fifth, and added an RBI single in the seventh.
That hit, plus the three-run bomb by Gonzalez, gives Boston enough cushion so that it can sit down Josh Beckett. Matt Albers is on to pitch the seventh against the reeling New Yorkers.
9:36 p.m.: Adrian Gonzalez hit a home run. The sun should come up tomorrow. Death, taxes, all that stuff.
This guy is a menace right now. He just slugged a three-run shot to right-center field to give Boston a 6-0 lead and chase CC Sabathia.
It is the fourth straight game that Gonzalez has homered. He has five total in that run and also has eight HRs in his last 11 games. Jim Rice holds the team May HR record with 13. At this pace, Gonzalez will be past that on the upcoming homestand.
Somehow, Joe Girardi got ejected during the pitching change. The Yanks have not been pleased with the strike zone tonight. Maybe Girardi just wanted to get away from what is becoming a disastrous day for New York.
9:33 p.m.: Sorry folks, this program continues to swallow my posts. We have a lovely relationship.
Josh Beckett got through the bottom of the sixth just fine. He is at 106 pitches.
While trying to get this thing to work, Jason Varitek just singled in a run in the top of the seventh. CC Sabathia hanging by a string here.
Mid 6th, Red Sox 2-0: Josh Beckett’s pitch count is up to 96 as he begins the bottom of the sixth. Matt Albers appears to be up and throwing in the pen.
In case anyone is wondering, the Red Sox record for consecutive scoreless innings by a pitcher is 45 2/3, accomplished in 1904 by Cy Young.
End 5th, Red Sox 2-0: I know most of you care about the Red Sox here, but what we are seeing from the Yankees is pretty notable.
They have been horrendous in run-scoring situtations in this series. Of course, Clay Buchholz and Josh Beckett have a lot to do with that.
Beckett has eight strikeouts – two in the first, third, fourth and fifth – and the latest was huge. With runners at first and second, he threw his two-seamer to Mark Teixeira, who swung right through it.
Terry Francona cannot stop talking about the two-seamers to lefties, and how big that is for Beckett.
9:02 p.m.: Josh Beckett’s pitch count is at 90 one out into the fourth. That’s what teams like the Yankees can do. Even when you’re on your game and somewhat dominant, they make you work.
Mid 5th, Red Sox 2-0: Just as I fire off the prior post, CC Sabathia gets Adrian Gonzalez to hit into a 5-4-3 double play to end what could have been a much messier fifth inning for the lefty.
Jed Lowrie ended Sabathia’s run of 12 straight retired with his single. Ellsbury’s two-run double gives him 19 RBIs, third on the team out of the leadoff spot.
Kind of a weird night here. The Jorge Posada stuff. Sarah Silverman causing a stir in the FOX booth. Half the Boston media talking hockey. And since it’s Red Sox-Yankees, you know there will be something wacky in the second half of this game. Just the way it goes.
8:49 p.m.: All kinds of issues for CC Sabathia in the fifth, and it came out of nowhere.
Jed Lowrie and Carl Crawford singled before Sabathia inexplicably walked Jason Varitek on four pitches. You know that signals trouble.
Jacoby Ellsbury followed with a two-run double. The bases are loaded again for Adrian Gonzalez.
End 4th, 0-0: Josh Beckett has gotten each of his last four strikeouts victims (in the last two innings) on the cutter. It has been very effective tonight.
Robinson Cano and Russell Martin go down on strikes in the fourth. Beckett is at 70 pitches through four.
Beckett has not allowed a run in 16 1/3 innings.
Mid 4th, 0-0: That’s 12 in a row set down by CC Sabathia since the first two reached to start the game. He has struck out David Ortiz twice and has six strikeouts overall.
End 3rd, 0-0: There’s still a game going on, although all anyone can talk about is what the Jorge Posada situation means to the Yankees.
First, a quick summation of the bottom of the third. With two outs, Curtis Granderson singled and Mark Teixeira walked.
The struggling Alex Rodriguez went down swinging, elliciting loud groans throughout Yankee Stadium.
I recall a moment last year when Posada was catching and was getting some instruction from the dugout from Girardi on either a pitch call or something else. Girardi kept changing his mind and Posada showed his frustration with a shake of the head that displayed Posada’s frustration with his former teammate and current manager.
It seems their sometimes distant relationship has come to a head, but what does it mean for the rest of the team. Also, Posada’s average was horrendous, but he was one of the team’s leading power threats in April with six home runs and was batting .243 in April, not far from where many of the established veterans in this lineup are for the year. Plus, he is tied for fourth on the team in walks. So you can see why he might be offended that he takes the demotion and others keep swimming along.
Mid 3rd, 0-0: Five strikeouts through three innings for CC Sabathia. He finishes the third by getting Dustin Pedroia swinging.
Posada now up to 29 strikeouts. His career high was 52, in 119 more games back in 2007.
8:03 p.m.: So what we know is that Jorge Posada did remove himself from the lineup. Wait, did I already say that? Yes, nothing new, just confirmed now from Brian Cashman.
End 2nd, 0-0: Josh Beckett continues to mime CC Sabathia. He has a 1-2-3 inning of his own.
The Posada stuff is intriguing, to say the least. Apparently, he will meet with reporters after the game. It’s been a difficult season for the Yankees DH, but there may be more to it than meets the eye. We’ll see.
7:56 p.m.: There is word circulating that Jorge Posada removed himself from the Yankees lineup. Media (print only, so I’m on the outs) is meeting with Yankees general manager Brian Cashman right now to get the scoop.
It may have been on TV, but no sound here in the press box, obviously.
Mid 2nd, 0-0: No need for CC Sabathia to put on his cape and escape trouble, like he did in dramatic fashion in the first.
Sabathia struck out Jed Lowrie to start the inning, his fourth consecutive K. The next two went on a lineout and groundout.
As mentioned earlier, the Red Sox may have missed a chance there in the first. Well, they did, but what I mean is that it’s even more severe with Sabathia, whose ERA in innings 2-6 is 2.03.
End 1st, 0-0: Like Sabathia, like Beckett. Sort of.
Josh Beckett does what CC Sabathia did by allowing the first two to reach on a pair of singles. He needed four pitches to strike out Mark Teixeira, who is hitless in his last 29 at-bats against the Red Sox.
Beckett then won a battle with Alex Rodriguez, who hit a foul pop to Adrian Gonzalez. Robinson Cano was a strikeout victim.
For what it’s worth, Rodriguez was absent from New York’s lineup the last time Beckett faced the Yanks. It wouldn’t have made much of a difference the way Beckett was dealing.
Mid 1st, 0-0: That is the loudest I’ve heard Yankee Stadium just two outs into a game, but the fans here realized how big it would be if CC Sabathia could escape the jam he was in.
He did, and the crowd goes wild. Rightfully so.
Sabathia hit Jacoby Ellsbury with an 0-2 offering and then gave up a single to Dustin Pedroia. On a 1-2 pitch to the scorching Adrian Gonzalez, Sabathia climbed the ladder with a 93 mph fastball that Gonzalez chased.
Kevin Youkilis then failed to check his swing on a breaking ball, a common theme for him, and fell to 0-for-11 with a man on third and less than two outs. David Ortiz was next in line, and Sabathia similarly dispatched of him.
Sabathia is a guy you can get to in the first inning of games. He entered with a 5.62 ERA in the opening frame. But he usually settles down thereafter, and should be feeling good about striking out the 3-4-5 hitters with runners in scoring position. Very, very impressive.
7:14 p.m.: The first pitch from CC Sabathia to Jacoby Ellbury is a strike. Here we go.
6:31 p.m.: The Yankees have made a late lineup change. Jorge Posada, who was originally in the ninth spot in the lineup for the first time since 1999, has been scratched.
Andruw Jones will be the DH. Here is the new look against Josh Beckett:
Derek Jeter, SS
Curtis Granderson, CF
Mark Teixeira, 1B
Alex Rodriguez, 3B
Robinson Cano, 2B
Russell Martin, C
Brett Gardner, LF
Nick Swisher, RF
Andruw Jones, DH
6:03 p.m.: Let us go back in time, shall we? It was April 10 when these two teams met at Fenway Park and Josh Beckett opposed CC Sabathia.
While Sabathia was OK, allowing a run in 5 2/3 innings, he was a mere bit player on a night that belonged to Josh Beckett.
Beckett had given up three runs on five hits and four walks in five innings in his season debut in Cleveland. It looked a lot like many of his 2010 starts, but when he outpitched Sabathia five nights later, we knew things could be very different for Beckett.
“That was obviously a special night,” Terry Francona said of Beckett, who yielded two hits and struck out 10 in eight scoreless innings. “It kind of spring-boarded him. He’s had a lot of really well pitched games, maybe not to that [level]. That was a pretty impressive evening.”
Including that pretty impressive evening, Beckett is 2-0 with a 1.56 ERA in his last six starts. He has held opponents to a .162 average in that span. Nobody has scored off Beckett in 12 1/3 innings.
One problem has been run support. He is winless in his last four outings in large part because of the 2.38 runs of support (per nine innings). That figure is the lowest on the staff, second-lowest in the American League and sixth-worst in all of baseball. With Sabathia on the other side, that trend could continue.
5:30 p.m.: Among the early sights at Yankee Stadium today was that of the New York catchers, who have been a bit sloppy of late, getting in some extra work with Joe Girardi and Tony Pena.
While that went on, John Lackey had a critical side session with pitching coach Curt Young. Apparently, it was very positive.
“He and Curt went out there and had a really good side day,” said manager Terry Francona.
The manager has not commented on Lackey’s mental state amid some off-the-field issues, and will maintain that policy. He feels that any problems Lackey may have in his personal life should not impact him much on the mound, even if that seemed to be the case the other night in Toronto.
“I think that’s actually one of the things he looks forward to a lot,” Francona said.
Keeping with the theme of struggling hurlers, Dan Wheeler continues to rehab at Pawtucket. Entering Saturday, he had appeared just once, throwing a scoreless inning. Wheeler told the team he does not want to know when he will be used, just to simulate how his role normally is. There is no definitive timetable for his return but he should be ready when eligible to come off the DL on May 20.
In other news, Jacoby Ellsbury seems just fine after his incident in the ninth inning last night. He appeared to turn an ankle when trying to retreat to second base. Francona called it a bruised knee. Regardless, he told the staff early this morning he was good to go.
He really must be considering his numbers against CC Sabathia (1-for-13, six strikeouts, zero walks). The last time Sabathia faced Boston, Ellsbury sat. Then again, he was really struggling at the time.
Francona compared Ellsbury’s continued presence at the top of the lineup these past few weeks to that of Johnny Damon back in the day.
“I think he understands by being out there, whether at full strength or not, by being out there, especially at leadoff, he can impact the game a lot of different ways, and that’s an admirable trait,” he said of Ellsbury. “I used to talk about Johnny Damon, how he used to do that. As a manger and a coach, you really appreciate that.”
Another guy who was struggling back when the Sox last saw Sabathia was Jarrod Saltalamacchia. His bat remains relatively quiet, but the young catcher is infinitely more comfortable behind the plate. He was given loads of credit from Clay Buchholz for how Friday night’s game was called. And if you saw the way Buchholz was able to utilize almost every pitch with effectiveness, and keep the hitters off balance, you can’t really argue with that assessment.
Francona has seen a very big shift in Saltalamacchia’s game behind the plate.
“I think it’s slowing down for him a little bit,” Francona said. “The first couple of weeks, it was moving fast…a lot was coming at him in a hurry. Veteran staff, a lot was expected. Now he’s starting to get to know these guys a little better. He’s able to make adjustments on the fly…that’s important.”
As the Red Sox taking batting practice below, a reminder to follow Doug Flynn’s Bruins Live Blog tonight. That doesn’t mean you should completely neglect the Sox. Certainly, baseball is second fiddle right now, but you can figure out a way to follow both tonight. The live blogs are a nice tool for that.
4:56 p.m.: Much has been made down here of the Yankees’ current struggles, of which we discussed in the prior post.
Manager Joe Girardi has shaken things up a bit to try to end the doldrums. Here is his revamped lineup against Josh Beckett:
Derek Jeter, SS
Curtis Granderson, CF
Mark Teixeira, 1B
Alex Rodriguez, 3B
Robinson Cano, 2B
Russell Martin, C
Brett Gardner, LF
Nick Swisher, RF
Jorge Posada, DH
Mark Teixeira, who is a .194 hitter vs. Beckett, is hitless in his last 28 at-bats against the Red Sox. For Posada, it is his first start in the No. 9 spot since May 14, 1999, 12 years to the day. He went 0-for-4 that day.
3:00 p.m.: Greetings from a cloudy and cool Yankee Stadium, where the hometown fans, those of whom actually stayed until the ninth inning last night, have a bit of trepidation.
While last night’s game had so much to do with how well Clay Buchholz pitched, the Yankees continued some pretty poor baseball. They had a passed ball that led to the latest in a run of unearned runs, they constantly killed themselves with runners on and in hitter’s counts and their bullpen continued to struggle (this week, at least).
New York manager Joe Girardi has already called his team together to talk about their issues. Thus far, the team meetings haven’t helped and the Yanks have dropped seven of 10. They have also lost eight of their last 11 games against Boston.
New York can turn to CC Sabathia to try to break out of its current funk, but Boston counters with Josh Beckett. If Sabathia falters and the Red Sox pick up another game on their rivals, it might get a bit testy here, especially when you consider that the Yankees have played a ton of home games and had a host of rainouts early on. That means their schedule going forward will be filled with road games and very little time off.
Here is the lineup that will try to get to Sabathia:
Jacoby Ellsbury, CF
Dustin Pedroia, 2B
Adrian Gonzalez, 1B
Kevin Youkilis, 3B
David Ortiz, DH
Jed Lowrie, SS
Mike Cameron, RF
Carl Crawford, LF
Jason Varitek, C
Cameron is in there with solid numbers vs. Sabathia (7-for-18). Youkilis also has done well against the lefty. That’s about it, however. Sabathia has had success against most of the Boston hitters.
Heading to the clubhouse and will listen in on Joe Girardi, who is working with his catchers on the field right now, and Terry Francona.
8:00 a.m.: Saturday night in New York City and the Red Sox are taking on the Yankees, it’s a perfect time for a marquee pitching matchup.
Josh Beckett will oppose CC Sabathia when the two rivals meet again at Yankee Stadium. First pitch is 7:10 p.m.
Beckett is 11-7 with an ugly 5.90 ERA against New York, but dominated them earlier in the year, throwing eight scoreless innings on April 10 at Fenway Park. He carries a scoreless streak of 12 1/3 innings into this one.
Sabathia has won three of his last four starts. He was the losing pitcher opposite Beckett in that April 10 affair, giving up one run in 5 2/3 innings.
Behind the pitching of Clay Buchholz and home runs by Adrian Gonzalez and Kevin Youkilis, Boston took the series opener Friday night by a 5-4 margin.
