Welcome to what is quickly becoming one of the best rivalries in sports.
The Tampa Bay Rays and Boston Red Sox have met this season for 18 games, several memorable pitchers' duels and one particularly memorable bench-clearing brawl. The bad blood has been simmering all season, and now it will inevitably boil over as the last two AL teams standing meet in Tampa Bay for at least four more games starting Friday night.
Pitching propelled both teams to matching victories, three games to one, in the first round of the American League playoffs.
With Curt Schilling out for the year and Josh Beckett a bit weakened by a strained oblique, the Red Sox have found a third generation of postseason heros to pitch them through October. Jon Lester earned two of the Sox' three wins in their series victory over the Los Angeles Angels, putting up two matching seven-inning starts and allowing zero earned runs. Lester, Daisuke Matsuzaka and a reportedly "fine" Beckett will lead the Red Sox into Tropicana Field this weekend.
For the Rays, a quartet of young starters will set out to prove this October that the intangible effect of fall experience is overrated. James Shields (26), Scott Kazmir (24), Matt Garza (24) and Andy Sonnanstine (25), each making his first career postseason start, took the ball for the Rays in their first-round win over the Chicago White Sox, and the Rays' pitching staff posted a solid 3.81 team ERA against the homer-happy Sox lineup. How they will perform against the other more potent Sox, however, remains to be seen.
What bodes well for the Rays' young staff is the setting of this year's ALCS. All four Rays starters are prone to the occasional rookie mistakes, and all four have a tendency to serve up more than just the occasional long ball. The Sox and Rays, however, play in two of baseball's least homer-friendly ballparks -- both Fenway Park and Tropicana Field are among the six parks with home run rates 15 percent below average.
The Red Sox' bats are not exactly on a hot streak at the moment, as the team collectively managed a lackluster .250/.317/.375 line in four games against the Angels. Jason Bay and J.D. Drew teed off against the Angels' starters in the first two games back in Anaheim, but the Sox cooled off from there. They'll look to get back on track against a Rays staff that has had their number this season. It certainly doesn't help that they'll be without last year's World Series MVP -- Mike Lowell was scratched from Boston's playoff roster with an injured right hip. He was replaced on the active roster by Gil Velazquez, a minor league infielder who made his debut with the big club on Sept. 25.
As for the Sox' pitching staff, there are question marks. Beckett, who was dominant last postseason, leading the Red Sox to their second title in four years, has been a bit unreliable this season with his health in constant question. The team's sometimes-ace posted a 5.74 ERA in July followed by 5.82 in August, and the Sox slowed him down in September by limiting him to 25 innings in four starts.
Making his first start in 13 days Sunday night, Beckett looked ugly. He allowed four walks and nine hits, two of them home runs to catcher Mike Napoli, before leaving in the fifth inning after the Angels had taken a 4-3 lead and his pitch count had hit 106. The Red Sox' fate may hinge on whether Beckett is at full strength to shut down the Rays' bats in the coming week. He insists that he is, but for Boston's sake, his actions had better speak louder than his words.
As it has all season, the Rays' offense will continue to rely on the bats of Evan Longoria and Carlos Pena. Longoria went deep twice in the series opener against Chicago, posting a 1.020 OPS in the series, while Pena was an on-base machine in limited action. Pena missed part of the series with an eye injury but put up five singles and a walk in 11 plate appearances.
Overall, these are two very evenly matched teams. The Red Sox were chasing the Rays all season to win the division, and Tampa Bay finished the year two games in front. But as always, luck has a lot to do with that -- the Red Sox actually outscored the Rays by 71 runs in the regular season (845 to 774), while pitching and defense were on the Rays' side (671 runs to 694).
Head to head, the Rays were 10-8 in the teams' 18 regular season meetings, but the ALCS bodes a bit better considering their home-field advantage to open the series -- the home team was 15-3 in Rays-Sox games this year. But Tropicana Field or not, all logic may just go out the window when baseball's two newest rivals take the field for Game 1 on Friday night.
