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Early Notes from Seattle

* Kevin Youkilis is out of the lineup for a second straight night, battling some soreness in his right hand. Sean Casey is again his replacement at first.
The hope is that Youkilis got be back in the lineup tomorrow night when the Sox face Seattle lefty Erik Bedard. Then again, as Terry Francona noted today, Bedard's numbers are ``backward'' -- i.e., lefties are htting him better than righties -- so it wouldn't be the worst thing to have Casey play another day.
Francona was waiting until just before gametime tonight to see if Youkilis might be available for pinch-hitting duty.

* Francona spoke at length about his upcoming role as the manager of the American League All-Star team. The occasion was the the release of the first batch of voting results by fans, which puts a number of Red Sox regulars -- Jason Varitek, Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz, Dustin Pedroia and Kevin Youkilis -- leading at their respective positions.

* Now that Manny Ramirez has played his 2,000th game -- he jokingly invited everyone in the clubhouse to a party in celebration Monday night, giving out his room number -- he be placed in some sort of historical perspective.
Among the players who've reached the 2,000 game milestone, Ramirez is 10th in homers (498) and sixth in RBI (1,635).

* Finally, not surprisingly, Jon Lester was named A.L. Player of the Week for last week, sharing the honors with Detroit's Magglio Ordonez.
Lester, of course, no-hit the Kansas City Royals on May 19.
He's the third Red Sox player to be so honored this season. Ramirez won for a game in April, while Youkilis was honored for the week of May 5-11.

Posted by Sean McAdam  at 8:43 PM | Permalink