Red Sox still same ol' winners -- just with new faces
BOSTON -- OK, so the guy who is here because Julio Lugo got hurt drove in the guy who is here because Manny Ramirez pretended he was hurt and the Red Sox celebrated after a win started by the guy who filled in when Josh Beckett got hurt.
These are the Red Sox? Yeah, actually, these are the Red Sox, because this is what the Red Sox have become.
"This organization believes in winning," Dustin Pedroia was saying, in the middle of yet another champagne celebration at Fenway Park.
Pedroia was one of the new guys last year. Now it's Jed Lowrie, who drove in the ninth-inning run that beat the Angels 3-2 on Monday night, and sent the Red Sox back to the American League Championship Series for the fourth time in six years.
Now it's Jason Bay, who had the one-out double off Scot Shields, then slid home with the winning run, cutting a finger on his left hand in the process.
"It only stings when I get champagne on it," said Bay, who never had to worry about such things when he played for the Pirates.
The Red Sox have done what the Pirates and so many other teams can only dream of. They've institutionalized winning, to the point where we really should have expected them to oust the 100-win Angels (again).
The Angels made far too many mistakes, right up to the ninth-inning squeeze play that fell apart when Erick Aybar couldn't bunt a Manny Delcarmen fastball. But the striking thing in this series was that the 95-win wild-card Red Sox were simply a better team than that 100-win bunch from out West.
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| Jason Bay is one of the new Red Sox enjoying the tradition of winning. (Getty Images) |
It's still possible the Red Sox won't be able to get by Tampa Bay in the ALCS, just as they couldn't get by the Rays all summer in the American League East. But after this four-game reminder of how the Red Sox play when October begins, are you going to bet against them?
Beckett couldn't pitch Game 1, so Jon Lester started that game and also in the clinching Game 4 on Monday. He pitched seven innings each night, and didn't allow an earned run either time.
Lowell couldn't play Monday, so Mark Kotsay started in his place (with Kevin Youkilis moving to third base). Kotsay singled and scored the game's first run in the fifth inning, and he would have had the game-winner in the ninth if not for a diving stop by Mark Teixeira.
That brought up Lowrie, the 24-year-old shortstop who spent last October in the Arizona Fall League. He remembered Shields had struck him out on three consecutive curveballs in the eighth inning Sunday night, so he looked curve again. His ground ball rolled past second baseman Howie Kendrick and into right field, and Lowrie had three simple things on his mind.
