Red Sox Prepare for First Weekend With The Yankees

For the first time this season, the Sox will face the Yankees in a three game stint this coming weekend at Fenway Park.

After a dismal start in which the Sox won only two out of eight games, the team came alive this weekend against the subpar Baltimore Orioles. The team scored 30 runs in those four games and won all of them. They even bounced back from a 7-0 Baltimore lead to win 10-8. Jon Lester showed his old self with a great start, Youkilis pushed himself to batting .469, and Varitek added to his early homer count and is already at 3.

“That’s why you don’t panic the first two weeks of the season,” said the Sox manager Terry Francona. “You look up at one point, Jacoby is hitting .275, then Petey (Pedroia) is the same thing. We say it every year, but it happens. Everything gets blown out of proportion, and you just try to play good baseball because at some point in the season when you start logging enough at-bats and innings, you get into the grind and if you’re good it shows.”

With the good news of the weekend, there are still some serious problems on the Sox. Brad Penny (who gave up 8 runs in 3 innings on Friday) needs to find that old pre-surgery talent. Ortiz needs to prove that a rare triple he hit over the weekend wasn’t a fluke and that he can get past a rough start that has him batting .196 without a homer yet.

Injuries are a great deal of the problem. After Julio Lugo failed to start the season on the active roster because of surgery he had on his knee during the offseason, replacement Jed Lowrie just went down and now needs surgery on his wrist. The temporary fix – Nick Green – has been holding his own and has batted .268 in 12 games but lacks the speed and power of the two ahead of him.

Dice-K has also gone down with inflammation in his throwing shoulder. Justin Masterson filled in for him on Monday and gave up only one run in 5 1/3 innings, but his absence in the bullpen will be evident if Dice-K sits out for more than the stated 15-day stint. Dice-K is expected to start throwing again today after starting the DL on April 15, but he probably won’t be back until early next month at the earliest because of how seriously the training staff takes early season injuries. He’d started the season with a 12.79 era in 6.1 innings.

The Sox are not alone with the bad start. The Yankees not only lost the opener in their brand new stadium, they were destroyed by the Cleveland Indians on Saturday 22-4 and have gone 4-3 against the Rays and the Indians. The Yankees managed to score only 11 runs in those three games while their opponents scored 47. Xavier Nady, Alex Rodriguez, and Chien-Ming Wang are all going to sit the coming series out due to injuries.

The Sox still have two games to play with the Minnesota Twins this week before the pinstripes come to Boston, but the beautiful thought of watching Mark Teixeira strike out is already on our minds.