Projo Sox Blog

Click the play button below to hear Sean's comments, recorded this morning. The topics: the home-loving Red Sox' advantage on the schedule (unlike the Rays or the Yankees, they have more games remaining at home than on the road), Jason Varitek's triple-play-turned-two-run-single, Josh Beckett's up-and-down season, and the Yankees beginning to make their move.

Here are some excerpts from Sean's comments:

The schedule: "As you get down the stretch, in the final five or so weeks of the season, the home-road split [for the Red Sox] is I think 19 and 9 -- 19 of their last 28 are at Fenway, which would be a huge advantage. If the wild card and the division race are still bunched together, and if this pattern of disparity between home and road play continues [the Sox are 34-10 at home and 21-29 on the road], they at least have that to fall back on."

Is Beckett frustrated? "I'm sure he is. This is his third season in Boston and while this is nowhere near as dominant as a year ago, when he won 20 games and finished second for the Cy Young Award and was of course the dominant pitcher in their postseason run, it's also a lot better than his first year here, where he was terribly inconsistent and gave up a lot of runs and really was kind of a disappointment. This year falls to kind of in between. There have been some starts where he has hinted at that dominance, but then there have been quite a few of them like yesterday, where he gives up some runs and has his team in the hole. The best thing about him is, you know that he is so competitive that even if he falls behind 3-0, as he has the last two times out, he is going to battle and give you everything he's got and give the team an opprotunity to come back."

The Yankees: "I think Red Sox fans have probably learned the error of their ways: If they count out the Yankees out early in the season, it's going to come back to haunt them. I still think that's a flawed team that does not have enough starting pitching and ultimately won't hold up over the course of the 162-game season, but I also think that July is too early to have the Yankees out of contention. It seems about right that the three teams [Tampa Bay, Boston and New York] are closing together now."

 Tags  Josh Beckett New York Yankees schedule Sean McAdam SoxTalk

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