The Red Sox had their ace going yesterday, hoping that Jon Lester could beat Jeff Niemann and the Rays to guarantee themselves at least a split in their series and put Boston up 4 games in the AL Wild Card race. Four walks – plus a home run allowed to Ben Zobrist – put a damper on that though, as Niemann, rookie Matt Moore out of the pen for three innings, and then Joel Peralta for a scoreless ninth where just a bit better. Now just 2 games back, and with one more to go in Boston, can Tampa Bay – who was a full 8 games behind Boston as recently as September 6th (since then, the Rays have gone 7-3 while the Sox are just 2-8) – pull off the comeback?
Winning today would be a big help to Tampa – putting them within one – but playing in Boston is tough even with their own ace on the mound. The schedules going forward seem to favor the Red Sox though.
Boston faces: the Orioles for 4, the Yankees (in NY) for 3, and then the O’s for 3 more
Tampa faces: the Yankees (in NY) for 4, the Jays for 3, and then the Yankees for 3 more
Baltimore has played spoiler a bit recently, taking 2 of 3 from the Rays and the first two games of their series with the Angels, but getting 7 games against a team that’s 63-88 seems like a better deal than 4 against the Yankees (92-59) and 3 against Toronto (76-76). If New York clinches the AL East sooner rather than later, it’s possible that they’ll concentrate more on resting some regular and setting their rotation for the playoffs in that final series of the year but, if so, that probably only brings them closer to par with the O’s.
Getting things down to 1 game – and potentially even after today – is a great accomplishment for the Rays. But because of the schedule, it’s going to be a real uphill battle for the team to make a playoff appearance. The odds (via Baseball Prospectus and Cool Standings) appear to give them about a 5% chance. That doesn’t look terribly encouraging, but there are quite a few teams who would leave to be such underdogs at this point.
Also last night: Tim Hudson out-dueled RA Dickey, with a Chipper Jones RBI double providing the game’s only run; homers by the O’s JJ Hardy and Mark Reynolds helped drop the Angels a game further back in the West; the Phillies clinched the NL East title with a good start from Roy Oswalt and some offensive production; and much more.
What to watch tonight: Chris Carpenter takes on Cole Hamels in the day’s best pitching match-up; Justin Verlander goes for win number 24 in Oakland (which, if he gets it, will put him in position to pick up 25 this year); and David Price will try to give the Rays the win in the finale of their four-game set with the Red Sox, who send 200 game winner Tim Wakefield to the mound. Full schedule with probable pitchers here.
