In many ways, they hit Baltimore on Friday with a clean slate. They are a team still in desperate need of an identity, a team that is certainly not completely on track yet, but with the first month almost over, they still have their heads above water.
Three wins in Toronto won't make a season. The Blue Jays are a bad team, and the Sox should beat them. In fact, they should beat them by more than one or two runs. In the spring of 2010, nothing has come easy for Boston's boys of summer, so they will gladly take these grind-it-out wins and move on.
The Blue Jays aren't the only bad team in baseball. Not by a long shot. The question is, are the 2010 Red Sox one of the game's good teams? This is a franchise that expects to be among baseball's elite every season, and to do that they’re going to have to beef up their record during the weaker stretches of this 162-game schedule.
They are in the midst of one of those stretches right now. After recording the first sweep of the season in Toronto, the Red Sox play the next three games in Baltimore against the Orioles, the team with the worst record in baseball.
Three of Boston’s first four series were against the Yankees, Twins, and Rays. The Red Sox dropped all three series, losing eight of the 11 games against those teams. It left them 4-9 on Patriots’ Day, the team’s worst start since 1996.
That’s why this was, in many ways, a critical road trip for the team. If the Red Sox don't take at least two out of three in Baltimore, they'll be back below .500 with some of the game's top teams lining up to face them. Here's a look at the schedule in the 24 days after this weekend's set at Camden Yards:
May 3-6 vs. Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
May 7-9 vs. New York Yankees
May 10-12 vs. Toronto Blue Jays
May 14-16 at Detroit Tigers
May 17-18 at New York Yankees
May 19-20 vs. Minnesota Twins
May 21-23 at Philadelphia Phillies
May 24-26 at Tampa Bay Rays
That's 23 games in 24 days, with all but three of them against teams with a winning record. Take out that one series with Toronto, and the combined record of the other teams on the schedule is 30 games over .500.
It'll be a very tough test, a stretch of more than three weeks that will have the Red Sox going up against some of the best teams — and best pitching — in baseball. Not a good time to be trying to figure out what kind of team you are. This is supposed to be a team with top-flight pitching, and it has been for the past two nights thanks to Clay Buchholz and Jon Lester. Now, Josh Beckett and John Lackey have to follow suit. And Daisuke Matsuzaka has to show that 2008 was no fluke.
Come Monday, we'll be asking how the Red Sox stack up against the Angels and Yankees and Twins and Rays. First, the Sox have to answer a few other questions.
Will the rotation live up to the hype?
What's wrong with Hideki Okajima?
Is Manny Delcarmen all the way back?
Can the Red Sox get consistent offensive results?
Baltimore is a great place to figure those things out. The Orioles are a long way from being a good team. This weekend shouldn't be a test — it should be three days of cramming for the real test that lies ahead.
