BOSTON Vs. NEW YORK : Round # 4

Well, it's that time again...
It's time for another round of the ubiquitous New York Yankees/Boston Red Sox rivalry to start heating up for another series of games.
Tonight will start the fourth three game series between the two teams in the 2007 regular season with the Red Sox having a 6-3 advantage in the season series so far.














The Red Sox also hold an almost insurmountable lead in the AL East divisional standings as the 2007 New York Yankees trail the first place Red Sox by 13 and a half games.
And it might be worth mentioning that while Boston enters this weekend's three-game set with the Yankees in possession of a 36-16 record (on pace for a 112-50 season), the 2002 Boston Red Sox also charged ahead in the 2002 season to go 36-16 in the first 52 games of that season and ended up fading out after the All Star Break and ending the season with a record of 93-69 and failing to make the playoffs as the Yankees won the East and the Angels won the Wild Card.
Is that likely to happen again?
Most likely not, as this seems to be one of the strongest Red Sox teams in the past decade or so and a total falling off of the map seems like only a remote possibility.
But it's sort of like a base runner hustling down the line on a ball he thinks will be caught.
You never know when somebody won't make the play and you would be, or would have been safe, because you never looked back and ran as hard as you could.
I think that if the Yanks play hard and put some things together they will have an outside shot at the division and with 110 games left to play they can certainly have a chance to take the Wild Card.
Neither will be easy as the AL Central has transformed itself from Comedy Central to perhaps the most competitive division in the league where you can easily imagine two different squads from the AL Central finishing the season with 95+ wins.
Gone are the days when the Minnesota Twins were the best team in a bad division and they basically just went to the playoffs to get rolled by the Yankees in the first round much like the 2005 and 2006 San Diego Padres.

Now the Twins, the Tigers, the White Sox, and the league leading Indians are there to play and last year the Wild Card came out of that division as the Tigers won 95 games to win the AL Wild Card.
That illustrates the rough road that we will have winning the Wild Card this year should we fail to capture the divisional crown.
But, until we are mathematically eliminated there is always hope for a team with talented players on it's roster.
Prior to 2004 no team had ever rallied from a 3-0 deficit to win a 7 game MLB post season series before the Red Sox did it.
Just four years ago the Red Sox had the same strangle hold type win percentage in the division and then didn't win it.
Lots of things happen in baseball and it seems like almost every year there are some sort of surprises with the Red Sox and the Yankees and the things that they do or don't do and almost every year I see something I haven't seen before or didn't expect to see.
I don't always agree with John Sterling but he said something a week or two ago that stuck with me a little bit.
I may have mentioned this in an earlier blog, but I can't remember...
Anyway, he made the analogy that if you started reading a great novel and you were totally engrossed in it --- would you stop reading it when you were 100 pages into a 350 page book because you had already guessed how you thought it would end and just knew that there could not possibly be any twists or turns you didn't anticipate and so you just quit reading?
Sometimes things happen that you don't expect and even if this 2007 story doesn't end up having the ending that I want --- that won't stop me from continuing to keep reading and trying my best to have a positive out look for the rest of the story.
The ending hasn't been written yet and there still more pages left to read that the ones already read.
Anyways, with that said the Yankees open up a three game series with the rival Boston Red Sox at storied Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts.
Tonight the pitching match up will be Chien Ming Wang (RHP) who comes into this game with a record of 3 wins and 4 losses and an ERA of about 4.13.
Wang was pretty good in his last outing against Anaheim when he allowed 3 runs in the first inning of the ballgame but then settled down and didn't allow a run over the next inning while striking out six Angels hitters.
It appears that Wang's early pitching issues were related to his arm slot and not consistently keeping the ball down, which is something that catcher Jorge Posada and pitching coach Ron Guidry seem to have had to remind him often to keep up.
It is also worth mentioning that Chien Ming Wang has yet to allow a home run to a right-handed batter all year and so far has been able to induce at least one ground-ball double play in each of his past seven starts, which matches the longest streak of his career.
I'd love to see an eight inning outing for him tonight against the Red Sox and hopefully our bats can get working to give him some run support.
Jeter and Posada continue to be hot hitters for the New York Yankees and Robinson Cano has been heating up as of late as he has collected 14 hits in his last 40 at bats and has a batting average of .350 in the last ten games.
One player that the Yankees will have to do without is Jason Giambi as he has tissue damage in the arch of his left foot and this injury will assuredly keep Giambi out of action 3-6 weeks and the most likely scenario at this point is that he will be out of action for the remainder of the 2007 regular season.
This could prove to be a fairly significant blow to the overall Yankee offense.
While Giambi has been slumping somewhat as of late and doesn't own the most sparkling of batting averages he still has had a good eye in the batters box and takes pitches and coaxes walks.
And even though he doesn't hit them quite as often as he used to --- he is still one of the few Bronx Bombers that has driven in some runs via the long ball and he's always hit Wakefield pretty well.
I, for one, wish that we had him in this series.
Opposing Wang in tonight's action will be Tim Wakefield, RHP (5-5, 3.36) who was able to win a game for the Red Sox for this first time in three attempts this past Sunday in Texas against the Texas Rangers .
In his previous three starts for Boston Tim Wakefield has given up 15 runs over 19 innings and in three starts this season at Fenway, he is 1-2 with a 4.05 ERA and has allowed three home runs in 20 innings.
Also worth mentioning is the fact that Wakefield is is 0-2 with a 7.84 ERA in two starts this year against the Yankees, who are batting .326 against him. In addition to that in 44 career games (27 starts) against the New York Yankees, Wakefield is 9-15 with a 4.76 ERA.

Well, that's sort of the tale of the tape for tonight's ballgame.
The first pitch is scheduled for 7:05 PM EST and the game can be seen on both YES and NESN.
Be sure and tune in to the YES Network at 6:00 PM EST for the batting practice show and then stay tuned for the pregame coverage beginning at 6:30 PM EST and then the game itself at 7:00 PM EST.
Best of luck to the team and the coaching staff and lets root on our boys as we try to go out there and win this series against Boston on the road !

LETS GO YANKEES !

Mike