Who Is This Pitcher and What Have You Done with Dice-K?

The Red Sox took down the Angels tonight, 4-1, in the first game of the series, for their sixth straight win. The story, though, was a new pitcher on the mound who looked vaguely like Daisuke Matsuzaka. Dice-K didn't allow a hit in the first four innings, retiring 14 of 16 batters (the two to reach were walks). He worked out of a couple of jams in the fifth and sixth with big strikeouts and started the seventh before Francona called in Ramon Ramirez after a leadoff walk. Wagner, Bard, and Papelbon finished it off from there, with Bard finishing the 8th for Wagner when Vladimir Guerrero came to the plate.

Dice-K used his fastball heavily tonight, along with his slider. He spotted it well on both the arm-side and non-arm-side of the plate (painting as Eck would say). After the game, Tito said he never looked like he strained himself or reached back for much extra, despite being solidly around 92 mph all game. It was all about location, getting ahead, and poise in big situations for Matsuzaka and everything we begged to see from him came together and paid off well. He threw 93 pitches in 6+ innings (87 through 6 innings before the leadoff walk), which is even better than the 15 per inning I mentioned earlier. He ended with five strikeouts, three walks, no runs, and just three hits. We're all very excited about this new Dice-K (especially considering it was against the Angels' strong lineup that's leading the league in BA), but before we get our hopes up, remember Paul Byrd threw six shutout innings in his first start of September....

The Sox were blanked by John Lackey for five innings, but Boston put up two runs in each of the sixth and eighth innings. Boston bunted twice with no outs in the sixth trying to get the first run across, the second of which was thrown away into left field by John Lackey, scoring Alex Gonzalez. Ortiz later singled home Ellsbury before Lowell and Kotchman each struck out with the bases loaded. Drew tripled in the eighth, Bay singled (thrown out at second) and Ortiz hit a monster home run to center off Jose Arredondo. Not their best offensive night, but they got it done when they needed it against a legitimate ace in John Lackey. Great win!

NOTES

-Neither Youkilis, nor Victor Martinez started tonight. Youk has been suffering from back spasms and V-Mart's leg is sore from his block of the plate Sunday (he also returned to Cleveland for a couple of days for a family matter).

-David Ortiz set the MLB record for career home runs as a DH tonight with his 270th. Great for Big Papi who is all the way up to 24 HRs.

-Dice-K should pitch again Sunday, assuming no abnormal soreness.

-Texas is down by 5 runs right now in the 7th, meaning they could be down 5.5 games in the Wild Card by night's end, despite getting Michael Young back.

-The Sox's magic number for a playoff spot would then be 14 (yeah... we're that close to the end of the season...)