BOSTON — The similarities are striking.
Last season, after being swept in Baltimore, the Red Sox were three games below .500 when they opened up a four-game series with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim at Fenway Park on May 3. Clay Buchholz was the starting pitcher, and Boston was in need of a win, already seven games out in the American League East and looking nothing like the team many expected to see when 2010 began.
This season, the club was three games below .500 on May 2 when it opened a four-game set with the Angels at Fenway Park on May 2. Once again, it had just lost a series to a bad team, dropping two of three to Seattle, and Buchholz was the starting pitcher for a team looking to string some wins together.
If history does indeed repeat itself, the Red Sox could be sitting pretty come July.
Just as he did Monday, Buchholz got the win in that series opener last year. The victory kicked off a 38-18 run that helped Boston shave nearly all of its deficit in the division. By the time play ended exactly two months later, on July 3, the Red Sox were tied with the New York Yankees for the most wins in all of baseball.
Injuries derailed the season soon thereafter, and Boston never got all the way to first place. However, for one solid stretch of the season, no team played better baseball than the Red Sox, and it all began with a four-game series against the Angels at Fenway Park in early May.
By the way, the starting pitcher in the second game of that set was Jon Lester, the same guy on the mound for Boston in game No. 2 on Tuesday night. Lester went eight innings, giving up one run in a 5-1 win to get the Red Sox to within a game of .500. He will be trying to do the same thing this time around, and hoping for similar results for his team over the next two months.
