On Wednesday night, the Red Sox suffered one of their most depressing losses of the season, an 11-10 debacle in Toronto. Tim Wakefield remains at 199 career wins, after leaving the game with a two-run lead and watching Daniel Bard give up five runs in one inning of work.
Wakefield’s frustration is one thing, but the frustration of Red Sox Nation watching Mike Aviles thrown out in a stolen base attempt to end the game is another. For the first time in a while, there's an uneasy feeling surrounding this team.
The Sox have now lost six of the last nine games. While they are still very much in control of their playoff destiny, they haven't been able to pull away from the Tampa Bay Rays. On Wednesday night, while the Sox were blowing the lead in Toronto, Rays manager Joe Maddon was having some fun on his Twitter account after a 10-inning win against the Rangers:
"We want to be like the guys in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," wrote Maddon. "Relentless pursuers who prompted the line: 'Who are those guys?'"
Indeed, the Rays haven't gone away. They began Thursday morning seven games behind Boston in the loss column. They face the Sox seven more times. And they have the best ERA in the American League.
Having said all of that, it would take an epic collapse for the Sox to blow their lead in the standings. The worry you felt after the loss in Toronto wasn't about missing out on the playoffs. It was about what could happen once those playoffs begin.
On Wednesday night, we were reminded that the seventh inning relief spot is still very much up for grabs. Dan Wheeler gave up a couple of runs and a hit (after getting out of a sixth-inning jam). That meant they needed to get to Bard earlier than they wanted to, and we saw what happened.
The starting rotation was supposed to be a strength for the Sox, but Josh Beckett will miss his next start with an ankle sprain. Erik Bedard is already missing his next start with a sore knee. Clay Buchholz isn't throwing off a mound yet. So Andrew Miller pitches the final game in Toronto, and Kyle Weiland starts the second game at Tropicana Field.
If the standings don't change, the Sox will open up the American League Division Series three weeks from Friday in Detroit. Against overwhelming Cy Young frontrunner Justin Verlander.
Fortunately, the season doesn't end this week — it ends in three weeks. That's a lot of time to settle these pitching concerns. And make no mistake, there are plenty of things to be concerned about right now.
