Baseball Reflections

ALCS Game 4 Wrap Up

Visits: 26

By Peter Schiller

Indians go up 3 – 1, Win 7 – 3

This game was a pitcher’s duel outside of 2 halves of an inning. The Red Sox pitched well through 4 innings yet again, but gave up another 7-run inning, this time in the 5th. Wakefield pitched well until he deflected a liner up the middle that could have ended the inning with a double play. Instead, everyone was safe and a run scored. Delcarmen came in later that inning & gave up a 3-run HR to Peralta and another manufactured run later & the game is now 7 – 0. Cancer survivor Jon Lester came in & pitched a scoreless 6th, 7th & 8th!
Byrd also pitched well, for five innings until he gave up back to back HR’s to Youkilis & Ortiz in the only who batters he faced in the 6th. Prior to that, he pelted the strike zone with first pitch strikes against almost every batter. He even went into that double wind up of his a few times! His immediate reliever was rookie Jansen Lewis, who after allowing a third HR in a row to the Sox, this one coming from the bat of Ramirez*, settled in nicely & pitched without giving up another run. he was relieved by Betancourt, who was once again, lights out!

*The Red Sox were the first team to hit back to back to back HR’s in the LCS! But that seemed to be minimized by the surrounding silence of their bats before & after that brief show of life.

Game 5 will be on Thursday with a rematch of game 1: Red Sox Ace & Cy Young candidate, Josh Beckett going against Indian Ace & Cy Young candidate, C.C. Sabathia. Can Beckett match his performance of both of the game 1’s he’s pitched thus far and extend this series for the Sox, or will the stiffness in his back that he felt at the end of his last start cause him problems? Can Sabathia bounce back from his 5 walk, 8 run whipping by the Sox in game 1 to regain his composure & close this series out, or will he once again be out pitched by Beckett & hit hard by the Sox who now face elimination.

We all know what happened the last time a Red Sox team had their backs against the wall in 2004 😉
Can they find that magic one again? Will Beckett emerge as the new Mr. October, replacing Reggie Jackson? Only time will tell!

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

x  Powerful Protection for WordPress, from Shield Security
This Site Is Protected By
Shield Security