By now, you should realize that the Red Sox are going to win the American League East title and finish in first place for a second successive season for the first time since 1916.
The Tampa Bay Rays have waged a scrappy, valiant fight for first, occupying the top spot since June 28 except for five days around the All-Star break and only one day when they played a game. It would be nice to have them rewarded for a surprising, stupendous season, but even after beating the Red Sox twice this week they seem to be ready to have Boston overtake them.
By now, you should also realize that the Yankees aren’t going to make the playoffs for the first time since 1993, their 13-year American League record run going down in flames. Unlike the Red Sox, the Yankees haven’t stayed close enough to the Rays to overtake them for the wild card.
On the last day of August the Yankees lagged a season-high 12½ games behind the Rays. After games that day, the Red Sox were 5½ games behind the Rays, the farthest they have been from first all season.
As the Red Sox and the Yankees have shown, a team can make up a 5½-game deficit in the last month of the season (see 1978). Twelve and a half is another matter. The Red Sox stormed from 5½ behind the Rays to half a game back in the first eight days of September. The Yankees chugged from 12½ back to 10.
Some members of the Yankees organization may want to blame injuries for the team’s shortcomings, but the Red Sox have had injuries of their own. They also had the Manny Ramirez factor.
As well as the Red Sox have overcome their injury-induced deficits, they also have overcome at least one of their own mistakes.
Jon Lester is the only Red Sox starter who has not been on the disabled list this season. Curt Schilling has missed the entire season, Bartolo Colon has been on the disabled list since June 17 and Daisuke Matsuzaka, Josh Beckett, Tim Wakefield and Clay Buchholz have all spent time on the list.
But when he was healthy, Buchholz was an awful starter, and the Red Sox unwisely kept giving him chances to show he belonged in the rotation and could help them win. In his first eight starts, before he went on the disabled list in May with a broken finger nail, Buchholz, who as a rookie last season pitched a no-hitter, had a 2-3 record and a 5.53 earned run average.
After his fingernail healed and he spent about six weeks in the minors, Buchholz returned to the Red Sox and the rotation and started seven more times. In those seven games he had a 0-6 record and an 8.26 e.r.a.
The Red Sox, meanwhile, had a rookie right-hander, Justin Masterson, whom they could have started instead of Buchholz. A 23-year-old right-hander, Masterson had started nine games earlier in the season, producing a 4-3 record and a 3.67 e.r.a.
But the Red Sox removed Masterson from the rotation after he lost to the Yankees, 2-1, July 5. Leaving Buchholz in the rotation, they put Masterson in the bullpen, where he has pitched so well (2.02 in 20 games) they have left him there.
“We think getting Justin acclimated to the bullpen really gives us a chance to really help our club,” Terry Francona, the Boston manager, said at the time the decision was made. But Francona also said, “We wanted to, at some point, get Clay back here and get into the rotation.”
The Red Sox did that and delayed their drive to catch the Rays.
Last month the Red Sox finally addressed the Buchholz issue, trading for a veteran starter, Paul Byrd, from Cleveland to replace Buchholz in the rotation. The 37-year-old Byrd has won four of his five Boston starts.
With their rotation recast and their most successful starters healthy, the Red Sox are in a great position for the rest of the regular season as well as the post-season. Having Beckett, Lester and Matsuzaka for the first three games of any playoff series makes for an imposing array, even against the Angels, who have their own strong trio in John Lackey, Ervin Santana and Joe Saunders.
The Red Sox lost five of their six games with the Angels, but those games were played in the first 100 games of the season, in which the Red Sox had a .570 winning percentage. Their winning percentage since has been .622.
The Angels, with a slightly better record than the Red Sox and the Rays, are the team that obviously will present the biggest roadblock to the Red Sox return to the World Series for a chance to win a second straight and third in five years.
That’s what the Yankees did not so long ago, winning a bunch of World Series in a few years time, though that period will soon qualify as ancient history.
The Yankees and the Red Sox are scheduled to play in Boston the final weekend of the regular season. In happier times for the Yankees, that series would have represented heaven for fans of the two teams: last three games, playoffs on the line.
Alas, at best, if the Red Sox haven’t already clinched their playoff spot, the Yankees could be spoilers. That’s not saying much. The Washington Nationals, who have the worst record in the majors, play the Phillies on the final weekend and could be spoilers.
When the season began, spoiler wasn’t the role the Yankees envisioned for themselves. But then, they envisioned Phil Hughes, Ian Kennedy and Joba Chamberlain pitching them to their 14th consecutive post-season appearance. Remember, the Yankees didn’t need Johan Santana; they had their crack young pitchers.
Their planning was as bad as the Red Sox thinking was on Buchholz. The Red Sox, however, have outlived their mistake.