Sports Redux: About That Pitching

A few hiccups aside, Beckett and Lester have been more than fine. Tim Wakefield is back. Clay Buchholz is doing better than we expected. Unfortunately, you need a five-man rotation in this day and age (somewhere up there, Pud Galvin just snorted derisively), and that fifth starter has proved elusive all year for the Sox. Brad Penny was just sent packing. Daisuke Matsuzaka isn't ready. And Junichi Tazawa sure wasn't the answer last night, burying the Sox in a 9-0 hole in the fourth inning.

The Sox tried to scrape their way out of it, as solo home runs by J.D. Drew (twice) and Alex Gonzalez, paired with a series of eighth-inning doubles made it a somewhat respectable 9-5 final, but the Red Sox knew this game wasn't going their way, sending Nick Green to mop up the last couple of innings. Green's line: 2 IP, 3 BB, 0 R. The bar has been set, Billy Wagner.

The concern for Tazawa was certainly there after the game. He had to throw mostly fastballs, which the White Sox quickly figured out, timed, and scattered them to all corners of the park. "It was a rough night, right from the beginning," said Terry Francona. Also concerning is that newly-minted Red Sox stolen base king Jacoby Ellsbury sprained his ankle scoring from second on a wild pitch. He's day-to-day.

With Texas beating the Yankees, the Wild Card lead shrunk to a game and a half (all right, all right, and the AL East lead is still only six games away). The Rangers visit Minnesota this weekend, while the Sox kick off a series with the Blue Jays, with Josh Beckett trying to rebound from a couple underwhelming starts and get back to his ace form.

The Patriots are playing in Washington tonight in preseason game #3. The third game is usually as close to a real game as preseason games get, which still isn't much, so the Globe has some things to look for.

We also heard today that ESPN is going to launch a site specifically for Boston sports. They already do this for Chicago, and they're rolling out a few other cities as well. We're not sure what to tell your cousin in Omaha who already thinks that ESPN is an all-Boston network. They've already stolen Mike Reiss from the Globe to cover the Patriots. We'll see how this goes.