Lefty ace and a bearded face by Jared Carrabis
Youk's monster May continues, as Lester hurls CG for win


I wanted so bad for the headline to be about Kevin Youkilis tonight; I really did.

I'm at Fenway for this one, and I'm saying to myself after Youk's third inning home run, "The only thing that will keep Youk from being the headline of this game is a complete game shutout from Lester."

Well, since Jon Lester kept half of his end of the bargain, and Youkilis continued to tattoo the ball, 50/50 headline treatment tonight on SoxSpace.

Lester started the 2010 season off 0-2 with with an 8.44 ERA in three starts. The left-hander entered his Thursday night start against the Twins with a 3-0 record, 1.82 ERA and 40 strikeouts in the 34.2 innings since his April 18th loss to the Tampa Bay Rays.

Opponents were hitting .157 against Lester since his last loss entering Thursday night, and wouldn't get any easier for opposing batters. Through the first five frames, Lester was averaging exactly 10 pitches per inning, an inning in which the lefty held a healthy 5-0 lead.

The road that that five-run lead began in the bottom of the second, when Adrian Beltre hammered a solo shot that ricocheted around once is crashed into the Red Sox bullpen. The home run for Beltre was his third of the season.

In the very next inning, a walk by Dustin Pedroia and the first of three doubles on the night by Victor Martinez had two men aboard for Youkilis. The bearded one wasn't waiting around in this at bat, as he clobbered a first-pitch 96 MPH fastball to deep center field for a three-run blast.

Youkilis would finish the night 2-for-4 with a home run, a double and four 2-out RBI. In 18 games for the month of May, Youkilis is hitting .411 (23-for-56) with 4 doubles, 1 triple, 5 HR, 22 walks, 3 HBP and a sac fly. Tally all that up: that's 44 total bases and an eye-popping OPS of 1.371.

As @RedSoxStats pointed out, Manny Ramirez never had a month with an OPS of 1.300+ in his tenure with the Red Sox. David Ortiz, who has led the American League in walks twice, home runs once, OBP once and total bases once, while with the Red Sox, has only had one month in which he had an OPS of 1.300+, which came in September of 2007 (1.341 OPS).

The Red Sox would tag on another run in the fifth, when back-to-back doubles by Martinez and Youkilis upped Boston's lead to 5-0.

Lester's shutout bid was broken up in the top of the eighth, when Michael Cuddyer led the inning off with a double and came around to score on a ground out and a sacrifice fly.

The Boston ace racked up his eighth strikeout of the night to end the eighth inning, needing just 84 pitches to have made it that far.

Lester would allow an unearned run to score, after Pedroia committed his first error of the season. In what could have been a double play, Pedroia mishandled the feed from Beltre, as two quick outs turned into two men in scoring position with no outs. Lester went on to get the reigning AL MVP to ground out, and then struck out the 2006 AL MVP for the third time.

It took just 103 pitches, as Lester recorded the complete game victory. It was the first complete game for the Red Sox, as Lester held the Twins to 6 hits, 2 runs (one earned), walking none and striking out nine.

Final score: Twins 2, Red Sox 6
WP: Jon Lester (4-2)
LP: Francisco Liriano (4-3)

Game notes: To find the last time that Victor Martinez had three doubles in a game, you have to go all the way back to his Cleveland days on July 20, 2007. Kevin Youkilis' three-run HR in the third inning put him in a three-way tie with David Ortiz and Dustin Pedroia for the team-lead in homers (that's a lot of threes).

Tweet of the Night:

The TOTN comes from Daigo Fujiwara of the Boston Globe, who describes himself as a, "baseball junkie from Japan, who moved to Boston in 1992 and found Red Sox Nation right at home." Daigo is also the founder of JapaneseBallPlayers.com.

@DaigoFuji: Jon Lester's .714 career win% (45-18) ranks 2nd in MLB since 2006 (min. 50 decisions), trail only SF’s Tim Lincecum (.726, 45-17). #RedSox

Friday's pitching match-up:

The Red Sox pack their bags and head for the City of Brotherly Love, as they prepare for a three-game set with the defending National League Champions. John Lackey, who has yet to show Red Sox fans what he can do, gets the ball for the Red Sox in the series opener. Lackey has faced the Phillies just once in his career, giving up one run over five-and-a-third. Cole Hamels will oppose Lackey, who is 4-2 with a 4.29 ERA in 2010.

-Jared Carrabis

To order Jared's debut book, One Fan's Story: If This Hat Could Talk, click HERE!





Published on May 21, 2010

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