First Boston series of ten million over the course of the season. I don’t care the way some people do about rivalries in general, and this particular one I find myself sick of weeks in advance due to the constant pushing it gets from ESPN/etc. These teams are pretty evenly matched, but Boston has been hot lately and doing very well at home.
Friday, April 24th
Joba Chamberlain (0-0, 5.06ERA, 1.50WHIP) vs Jon Lester (1-2, 5.5ERA, 1.444WHIP)
Joba could absolutely not find the strike zone his last game out. That happens sometimes, but he really needs to recover as Jon Lester is the only left-handed pitcher in the universe who does better at Fenway than other parks.
Saturday, April 25th
AJ Burnett (2-0, 3.20ERA, 1.119WHIP) vs Josh Beckett (2-1, 3.79ERA, 1.316WHIP)
Burnett was also stricken with the “help I can’t throw strikes” sickness in his last start, but he still put together a good start. He walked 7 batters which is really, really bad but had Joe Girardi not put him out for a seventh inning of work Burnett would have ended the day with “only” 4. (Note to Joe: Stop putting starters back out like this, please!) Beckett hasn’t been an unstoppable force of nature or anything, but he’s an excellent pitcher as usual.
Sunday, April 26th
Andy Pettitte (2-0, 2.53ERA, .938WHIP) vs Justin Masterson (1-0, 1.59ERA, 1.235WHIP)
Old versus young. Andy’s been doing well, as I’m sure all readers of this particular blog know, but he has never done well in Fenway and it is a park that is not very friendly to LHP. Masterson got stretched very quickly to starting after Daisuke Matsuzaka came down with a case of the sucks (just like our very own Chien-Ming Wang), and did okay in his first start. I don’t really think he has the stuff to be a starter for a long time, but you never know with a guy who depends on a good sinker.
