MLB Postseason Recap

The Boston Red Sox pulled off an improbable comeback and send the series back to Tampa down 3 games to 2.

Boston Red Sox 8 Tampa Bay Rays 7: Allow me to say that if the Boston Red Sox come back to win this series they are a team with the biggest horseshoe up their ass ever. Down 3-0 in the ALCS in 2004 they come back to beat the Yankees, down 3-1 to the Cleveland Indians in the 2007 ALCS and they come back to win, and now down 3-1 to the Tampa Bay Rays and down to their final 7 outs while losing 7-0 the Red Sox score 8 runs and pull off an improbable comeback victory. Stuff like this is not supposed to happen and while talent certainly helps, you need a great deal of luck as well. By luck I mean that you need the other team to do things that weren't necessarily doing the whole series until the point. Some may even refer to it as choking, which in some cases it is.

What allowed the Red Sox to comeback last night was a Tampa bullpen which up until yesterday's game had been excellent, but last night they had nothing serving up a few meatballs to the Red Sox that ended up costing them the game. B.J. Upton may have had a chance to catch Mark Kotsay's line drive to deep center and Evan Longoria rushed his throw ever so slightly in the 9th with Kevin Youkilis running to first. Longoria ended up one hopping a throw that Carlos Pena could not handle and that throw ended up bouncing all the way into the seats. Certainly neither of those plays helped the Rays bullpen either, but even without them they were off of their game. Dan Wheeler particularly looked like he had nothing and was leaving the ball up in the strike zone throughout the night. I thought Madden might have went to Balfour too early and could have used someone like Chad Bradford to either start the 7th or relieve for Wheeler in the 8th once he saw that he had nothing left. On the season, Bradford has a 1.93 ERA against the Sox and for his career he has a 3.27 ERA, so I think he would have been a solid option.

Make no mistake about it though, you definitely have to give credit to the Red Sox because they took advantage of all of Tampa's mistakes and that is what good teams do. It just is especially maddening to see a team get dominated for the better portion of the last 3 games and then see them pull out one of those games and now steal momentum for the series. Now heading back to Tampa, we really don't know what Josh Beckett we are going to get in Game 6 and I would be surprised if he gets shelled twice. If the Sox win that game then they would be set up nicely for a Game 7 with Jon Lester and although he got shelled in Game 3, I'm sure the Red Sox like their chance with him on the mound.

So I think the Rays must win Game 6 , which is no gaurantee because we don’t know which Beckett is going to show up or if there will be any carryover from Game 5. The problem really isn’t that the Rays lost Game 5, because I think most people expected the Red Sox to win at least one game at home, its HOW they lost it after being up 7-0 with 7 outs to go. Now the Sox have the momentum and the Rays have something to think about. If it snowballs into Game 6, then you might as well give the series to the Sox…and probably another World Series. The Rays need to keep it together for Game 6 and as hard as it is they need to put Game 5 behind them as quickly as possible.

Put On Notice: The whole Tampa Bay Rays team