In The Land of Rocky

We took 2 of 3 from the Phillies in Philadelphia during the week. We left Philly with Colon on the DL, Coco has hurt his wrist, Schilling looks like he might not be back, and Manny is in the lineup then out of the lineup. JD Drew is still hitting though and he has filled in nicely for the Big Papi who got his cast removed during the week.

On Monday, we lost 8-2 and Colon got hammered with 2 first inning home runs and left after giving up 4 runs over 4 innings with a sore back. Our bullpen held them - other than Timlin who once again gave up 4 runs in 2/3 of an inning. Pedroia and Drew went back to back in the 5th inning to make the score 4-2, but after Timlin came in and gave up 4 runs, we were out of it.

On Tuesday, we won 3-0 on the pitching of Lester and the 2 run home run of Coco Crisp. Lester had another excellent outing going 7 innings of shutout baseball and gave up just 6 hits while striking out 5 over those 7 innings. Papelbon came in and struck out the side in the 9th to close it out.

On Wednesday, we won 7-4. JD Drew went 4-5 and had a home run in the first inning to give us the early lead. He went on to have 4 rbi's in the game and Brandon Moss had 2 rbi's with 2 outs to add to our lead. We jumped out to an early 4-0 lead in the 1st and lead 7-1 after 4 inning. Hanson had some trouble in the 7th but we held on and Paps got another save coming in the 9th. Manny was out of the lineup with a tight hamstring and Coco injured his wrist.

As a team, we are getting banged up pretty bad, but it seems we keep on winning and somebody is always stepping up to fill the void of an injured player. We are pretty deep all around and hopefully we can make it through all these injuries. Tampa Bay is still hanging in there with us which really surprises me. New York is starting to come on as they always seem to do. This year it might be a three team race for the East. Now an off day then 3 against the Cards in Boston. I am sure there will be a lot of talk about the 2004 team this weekend - which is always fine with me.