One of the more surprising developments of the second half of the major league baseball season has been the blowing open of the AL East race. While I’m enough of a partisan Boston fan to still be on pins and needles as they get set for a three-game series with Tampa Bay starting tomorrow, I also know how I’d view a race that had a margin of 7 ½ games with three weeks left if I were on the outside looking in—as all but over.
The Boston Red Sox are gaining steam in the American League East. The bottom dropped out 12 days ago and Josh Beckett was booed off the mound early, amid reports that he’d been golfing after being unable to pitch and then looking equally unable to pitch when he actually did take the mound against Cleveland. But after that game, the Sox won three in a row from the Indians, then took two from Seattle—including a shutout from Beckett. They split two with Tampa and finally won two of three in Philadelphia over the weekend, with the Sunday rubber match featuring Beckett outdueling Cliff Lee. The Sox are still in fifth place in the American League East and they’re still a game under .500. But they’re only one back of the New York Yankees for fourth in the Division Turned Upside Down and they’re doing with some unlikely heroes.
The Tampa Bay Rays are red-hot and in first place, the Boston Red Sox found their footing and the American League East is starting to assert itself as once again the best top-to-bottom division in baseball. But no team is more newsworthy right now than the Baltimore Orioles who sit at 15-9, just one game back of Tampa and in second place as they get set for the rubber match of a three-game set in Yankee Stadium tonight, and it’s pitching that’s keyed the O’s strong showing out of the gate.