Swimming Lessons

The Red Sox hosted the Rays on a misty Wednesday evening, and when the skies hadn't cleared, the Sox emerged in first place, a half game ahead of Tampa.

The game had a set to between Coco Crisp and Rays' manager Joe Maddon, as Crisp took on Rays' second baseman Iwamura on a hard slide after Jason Bartlett had blocked Crisp from sliding head first into second.

Josh Beckett raised his record to 6-4 and lowered his ERA to 4.07 with six innings of 1-run ball. The Sox also had three innings of solid relief work from Delcarmen, Okajima, and Hansen, the latter emerging as an effective component of the Sox bullpen.

The Sox bullpen has shown new life and a revised pecking order:

• Closer - Papelbon
• Setup - Okajima/Delcarmen
• Primary middle - Delcarmen/Hansen
• Long - Aardsma
• LOOGY - (lefty out of the bullpen guy) - Lopez
• Looking for a role - Timlin

The umpires missed a homerun around the Pesky Pole by Dustin Pedroia. Pedroia needs a little luck and looks to have shaved his head for a change of luck. Another blow for instant replay...for the Neanderthals in MLB, who also recently lost an intellectual property suit for statistics.

The Sox have improved their overall K/BB ratio to 1.89, still lower than desired but a big improvement from where they were.

It was an agricultural blight for the Pawsox and SeaDogs, who combined for three hits in two games (the latter in five innings). Clay Buchholz tossed five shutout innings for Pawtucket while battling to regain his place in the rotation. In pitching starved MLB, the Sox have chosen to have pitching depth and you can't have too much.