SCHILLING TO DL

Although Curt Schilling's MRI revealed no structural damage, he'll be placed on the 15 day DL, retroactive to Tuesday with tendinitis in his shoulder. Josh Beckett will take his spot on Sunday on full rest, setting up a duel between him and Jake Peavy. Tavarez will be bumped up a spot on Monday in Seattle. The hole in the rotation will open up on Tuesday. Jon Lester could be the candidate to fill it. Lester's start on Wednesday wasn't that good. He allowed 3 runs in 5 innings in a loss.

Kason Gabbard is also a potential replacement. He starts tonight against Indianapolis, which means he could go Tuesday on regular rest. He's also 6-2 with a 3.26 ERA.

This DL stint is the best thing for Schilling and for the Red Sox. Curt started out great. In April, he was 3-1 with a 3.27 ERA. In May, he fell off a bit, going 2-1 with a 4.03 ERA. And in June, even with the 1 hitter, he is 1-2 with a 5.79 ERA. Take out the 1 hitter, and he's got a 9.42 ERA in June. Something is definitely wrong with him. Maybe it's just old age, which means his career might be coming to an end.

GEORGIA SLUGFEST

Doesn't a Georgia Slugfest sound like something that might actually exist? Every year on the third week of June, come on down to Savannah for the Georgia Slugfest. There'll be slug races, a slug petting zoo, slug eating contests, and so on.

The Sox belted 5 homeruns last night in Atlanta, which is saying something because Turner Field is not a homerun friendly ballpark. But Buddy Carlyle is a homerun friendly pitcher. At least, last night he was. He's allowed 6 homeruns this season, half of which were from last night's onslaught.

The Sox also hit 5 doubles, and 5 singles to go with their 5 homeruns. With the 4 walks they drew, they had 19 baserunners, and drove in 11 of them.

Just as impressive as the offense was the pitching. Julian "Air Traffic Control" Tavarez had one of his best starts of the season. He went 7 innings, allowing no earned runs off 3 hits and 1 walk. None of the hits were for extra bases.

This was the 3rd start that Julian has gone 7 innings. At the beginning of May, his ERA was at 6.48, now it's down to 4.50. In the month of June, he's got a 2.20 ERA in 4 starts. Right now, he might be the second best pitcher in the rotation.

JD Drew led off the game with a homer, and hit a double in the 2nd, but was removed from the game in the bottom of the inning due to tightness in his right quadriceps. The Sox say that it was merely a precautionary move, and considering it was a 7-0 game in the bottom of the 2nd, that's entirely possible. The Red Sox have a travel day today. We'll see what happens with Drew in San Diego.

The interleague schedule has allowed Francona to give Mike Lowell some time off. With Ortiz at first and Youkilis at third, Lowell has been sitting on the bench with an injured thumb, which might be affecting his swing. Lowell is definitely slumping as of late, hitting .203 in June.

Julio Lugo was once again hitless last night. He was robbed of a single when Jason Varitek went back to tag second on a line drive to left field. The line drive fell in, but Varitek was forced out at third, meaning that Lugo reached on a 9-5 fielder's choice. He is hitless in his last 16 at-bats, is hitting .201 this season and an appalling .109 in June.

Coco Crisp hit a 3 run shot in last night's game. Coco homered in every game of the series. He's hitting .300 this month. It would be great if he were finally coming around at the plate.

The Man of the Game is Julian Tavarez who went 7 innings, allowing no runs off 3 hits. He struck out 4 and directed all the traffic on the infield.

Honorable Mentions:
Manny Ramirez: 3/4, HR, 2B, 2 RBI, 2 Runs, BB
JD Drew: 2/2, HR, 2B, RBI, 2 Runs
Coco Crisp: 2/5, HR, 3 RBI

The Yankees lost to the Rockies, building the lead back up to 10 games in the AL East.

The Red Sox fly into San Diego, and will face some tough pitching. Matsuzaka against Chris Young on Friday night, Wakefield against Maddux on Saturday, and then a pitching deul that I'm really excited about: Beckett vs. Peavy on Sunday.

NOW THAT'S HOW IT'S DONE

Great pitching and timely hitting. That's what I like to see. Josh Beckett has become a bona fide Ace this season.

The only Sox starter who went hitless was Drew. Ortiz appears to be getting his power stroke back as he belted his 12th homerun of the season. Cora had a good day in the place of the struggling Julio Lugo. He went 1 for 2 with a triple, an RBI Sac-Fly, and a run scored.

But let's not get too overconfident due to this solid 4-0 win. We've done pretty well against Hudson in the past, and even though we knocked him out in the 6th, we didn't exactly clobber him, especially not early on. So let's just try to keep things in perspective.

The Man of the Game is Josh Beckett. He went 6 scoreless innings before being removed after a 50 minute rain delay. He probably could have gone 7 or 8 if necessary. He allowed 4 hits and 2 walks, while striking out 3. At the plate, he was 1 for 3 with an RBI double and a run scored.

Honorable Mentions:
David Ortiz: 1/3, HR, BB
Alex Cora: 1/2, RBI, 3B

SCHILLING MRI NEGATIVE
An MRI on Tuesday showed no structural damage to Schilling's right shoulder, but he said he has not felt right all year and would be surprised if he made his scheduled start Sunday against the Padres, reports the Boston Globe. Schilling will be re-evaluated on Friday.

He hasn't really looked right all year. He's had some brilliant outings, but he's lacked consistency. Maybe his arm is simply worn down. See, this is why you don't extend contracts to 40 year old players. You never know what's going to happen.

Maybe some time off will help him return to strength. Otherwise, it seems as though Tavarez might stay in the rotation when Lester returns.

BARE MINIMUM OFFENSE

I'm a Red Sox fan, so I'm a pessimist. Yeah, 2-1 wins are sweet, and always exciting, but they also mean that you only scored 2 runs. Two run performances are fine if they are once and awhile. But the Red Sox have scored 4 or fewer runs in 7 of their last 8 games. They've scored 3 runs or fewer in 5 of their last 7. In the last 8 games, they've scored 24 runs. Ten of those runs came in Friday night's victory in Arizona. So if you take out the 10 run game, they've averaged 2 runs a game recently. No matter how good your pitching staff is, that just isn't going to cut it. We need to start scoring runs again.

But I'll take the 2-1 victory, especially since the Yankees are playing well. Just kidding. I honestly think they are a big deal when you consider the fact that the Yankees needed to win 7 in a row TO GET to .500. So let's not all get scared and start scoreboard watching because New York is "only" 9.5 games behind us.

Wakefield's looking good again, which is very very nice to see. He said Mirabelli spotted something in his delivery, and he adjusted a bit. He's looked good in Oakland and was great last night.

Tim Wakefield was last night's Man of the Game. He went 8 innings, allowing just 1 earned run off 4 hits and 1 walk.

Honorable Mentions:
Jonathan Papelbon: IP, 0 H, 0 BB, 2 K
Aaron Cook: 7.1 IP, 2 ER
David Ortiz: 3/3, 2B

Schilling goes tonight.

SOX SNEAK A WIN BY

These are the games you're supposed to lose. No offense in the early innings, some young pitcher you've never seen mowing through the lineup. But these are the games that good teams are able to win.

This was a hard fought victory for the Sox. Down 3-0 in the 6th, Drew had a two out single which set up Varitek's two run shot. Varitek followed it up in the 8th with an RBI single to tie the game. Okajima did a good job of pitching around an error in the 9th in order to force the game into extra innings. Then in the 10th, Lowell hit a sac-fly to score Ortiz, and Papelbon finished the game off.

Very nice character win for the Sox.

This will not be Tavarez's last start of the season. Jon Lester says he feels better than ever, but he will pitch at least one more rehab start on Thursday against the Richmond Braves.

Have to give credit to Tavarez, though. Lately he's pitched well enough to give his team a chance at winning, and that's all you really want from your #5 starter.

The value of Kevin Youkilis's versatility comes through in these NL box scores. He can hit leadoff, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, he can play 1st, he can play 3rd (and if you ask he can play 2nd and the outfield).

The Man of the Game was Jason Varitek. He went 2 for 5 with a homer, a double, 3 RBI, and a run.

Honorable Mentions:
JD Drew - 3/5, 2 Runs
Micah Owings - 6 IP, 2 ER
Hideki Okajima - 2 IP, 0 R, BB, K

Unfortunately, no Pittsburgh Pirate hitter slammed a line drive up the middle into Roger Clemens in his start today.

J.D. WHO?

JD Drew kills Arizona pitching. I listened to about half of this game on the Arizona radio station (XM Radio always uses the home team's feed), and they were simply in awe of him. He's got a career average over .350 against the D-Bax.

It's funny that after a week of struggling offense, we lose the DH, Youkilis doesn't start, and we score 10 runs. Funny how that works out.

Lugo led off the game with a homer. He's got 34 RBI, and a .217 average. Those just might be the weirdest stats for a leadoff hitter I've ever seen. Drew belted a 3 run blast in the 3rd to make it 4-0. Beckett got hit around a bit in the 3rd and allowed a run. Of Beckett's 8 innings, he only allowed baserunners in three of them, the other five were perfect. We kept piling on and put the game out of reach in the 6th with another Drew 3 run homer.

Beckett pitched even better than his line suggests. 8 IP, 5 H, 3 R, 2 ER, 0 BB, 8 K, 1 HR. He easily could have gone the full 9, but with a 7 run lead, there was no need to. His spot also came up in the 8th, no sense in risking an injury there. He left the game having thrown 93 pitches.

A good indicator of how well the game went for the Sox was the fact that Josh Beckett went 0 for 4. That means he was pitching well enough to hit 4 times, and the lineup was hitting well enough to turn itself over 4 times.

There were a lot of pitches inside to Red Sox hitters. Manny got hit by one in the wrist, Lugo got buzzed. I wouldn't be shocked if there was an Arizona hitter beaned by Tavarez tonight.

The Man of the Game was JD Drew. He went 3 for 5 with a pair of 3 run homers and an RBI double. He had 7 total RBI, a career high for him.

Honorable Mentions:
Josh Beckett: 8 IP, 2 ER, 8 K
David Ortiz: 2/3, 2B, BB, Run
Manny Ramirez: 2/3, RBI, 2 Runs

Tavarez vs. Micah Owings tonight. I've got a bad feeling. Owings seems like one of those young, obscure guys who always seem to shut down the Sox. We'll see.

BRILLIANCE!

Curt Schilling, ladies and gentlemen, Curt Schilling.

What else can you say about this game? The pitching did well in Oakland, but was still losing. I guess Curt figured the only way he could win was to pitch a 1 hit complete game shutout. The funny thing is, we only scored 1 run for him! He really did have to throw a shutout in order to win.

The Man of the Game was, ummmmmmmm, let's see. Well, Ortiz had a homer AND a walk. Ummmm, Youkilis had a pair of walks. Varitek had a single. Ron Flores pitched a perfect 0.1 inning. Despite all of these contenders, I think Curt Schilling deserves the Man of the Game. Nine innings, 1 hit, 8.2 without allowing a hit, 4 strikeouts, faced 2 batters over the minimum (Lugo error), threw 100 pitches, 71 strikes.

Honorable Mentions:
David Ortiz: 1/3, HR, BB
Joe Blanton: 7.1 IP, 4 H, ER

So the Sox get some momentum going into Arizona. Josh Beckett on the hill late tomorrow night.

SOX BATS SILENCED, AGAIN

We're better than this. We're much better than this. This will stop. This will all stop.

Another good pitching performance, another disappointing offensive performance. But it wasn't just us. We had some horrible luck. Now, you can never, EVER blame luck for losing a game, but you can say that bad luck makes it easier to lose and/or harder to win.

There was the double off Wakefield that hit off the base, Crisp hit a hard ball that Chavez made a nifty play on to turn two, and the umpire was shaky behind the plate.

But we still lost. A stretch like this was bound to happen. We here in Red Sox Nation have a tendency to overreact, both ways. We were all making arrangements for the World Series about a week ago, and now we're scoreboard watching as our lead shrinks.

The Man of the Game is Joe Kennedy, who went 7 innings, allowing 2 earned runs. He allowed 7 hits and 6 walks, but there really isn't any other candidate for MOTG.

Honorable Mentions:
Tim Wakefield: 6.2 IP, 3 ER
Santiago Casilla: 1.1 IP, BB, 0 R, 0 H
Kevin Youkilis: 2/4, 3B, RBI, Run

The Bitch-Goat:
Wakefield: 0.2 - 3 ER
Crisp: 0.2 - 0/3, 2 LOB, GIDP
Lowell: 0.2 - 0/4, 3 LOB, K
Lugo: 0.2 - 0/4
Pedroia: 0.2 - 0/4