A Tale of Two Cities

Tonight in New York, the Boston Red Sox meet the New York Yankees in the ninth game of eighteen scheduled for this season. As it stands, Boston leads the season series 8-0, yet find themselves two and a half games behind New York in the American League East standings. This series of games may or may not have much bearing on the rest of the season, but it comes at an interesting time.

The biggest news of recent weeks was the disclosure (in the New York Times) that beloved Boston slugger David 'Big Papi' Ortiz tested positive for PEDs back in 2003 (of course former Sox hero Manny Ramirez was also on the infamous list, but that didn't really tell us anything we didn't already know). The Yankee faithful haven't really had 'good' reason to boo Boston players since Pedro 'Daddy' Martinez left town, but you can be sure that Papi will be made feel welcome in the Bronx tonight. Not that it should affect his 'form' much-Ortiz started the season horribly, finally started to hit, but has not looked too good since the revelations about 2003 surfaced (his home run in Baltimore as the story was breaking aside). Somewhat overshadowed by all of this has been the acquisition of Victor Martinez from Cleveland at the July 31 trade deadline. He's made a nice start to his Boston career-and his presence in the line-up for this series is vital, given the form of Ortiz, and the fact that the (slumping) Jason Bay will be absent for at least 2 of the games.

Aside from the patchy hitting, the state of Boston's pitching is also cause for concern at the moment. At the start of the season, the Red Sox thought they had 6 good starters-they now have around two-and-a-half. Recent efforts to acquire the likes of Cliff Lee, Roy Halladay and Felix Hernandez suggest that the Sox brains trust is worried-all of these guys are staff aces, not number 4/5 guys to fill out your rotation-perhaps they are writing off Dicey-K's season (and Sox career?), or know more about Tim Wakefield's health than the media. The Red Sox bullpen looked lights out, but now Justin Masterson is gone (and he had struggled mightily against lefties), there have been some meltdowns (a recent 10 run lead given back to the Orioles; Daniel Bard's wild inning in Tampa), and, even though his record doesn't show it, Jonathan Papelbon is often making the 9th inning mighty interesting.

Meanwhile, the Yankees pitching, Sergio Mitre aside (who misses his turn in this series) has looked pretty good. AJ Burnett was shelled last time out in Chicago, but has been excellent at Yankee Stadium. His Friday night duel with former Marlins team-mate Beckett is the match up of the series. The Yankees will hope to get strong outings from all their starters-their bullpen is still not great (until you get to their closer, who has had his issues with Boston in recent times), and, and the money invested in Burnett and CC Sabathia was undoubtedly offered with games against the Red Sox in mind. Add the pitching performance to a line-up that is begun to hit form, and things are certainly looking up for the men in pinstripes. While they don't need to win this series, you get the feeling that they expect to-if they don't start winning against the Red Sox sooner or later, you wouldn't feel too comfortable about their odds of doing so in a play-off series!

My call-bad and all as things are, the Sox should be able to split this 4 game series-assuming they are able to give Beckett and Lester enough run support (and assuming said pitchers are at the top of their game, which has been the case for Beckett lately, Lester, not so much). Anything they get from Smoltz and Buchholz is a bonus to be honest-the most I could ask to these guys is that they both make it through 6+ innings and save the bullpen. The long ball could be key-the new Yankee Stadium has given up more home runs than any other park this season (161 so far)-tonight would be a good night for Boston bats to come alive.