Matsuzaka v. Perkins (Game 39)

That's (almost) more like it!

For the most part, Matsuzaka had a really nice outing. He went seven innings. He worked efficiently, only needing ninety-six pitches to get his twenty-one outs. He struck out seven. He only walked three! He threw first pitch strikes to twenty of the twenty-nine batters he faced. He did run into some real trouble in the second inning. He walked the first batter, got a fly out, gave up two base hits to load the bases and then got a swinging strike out. But then on five pitches issued a walk to to the next batter to knock in the first Twins run of the night. It certainly wasn't a terrible turn of events, considering that he was close to getting out of the jam, but it is a little troubling.

Both Okajima and Papelbon had good outings. Okajima pitched a 1-2-3 eighth inning, featuring a fly out, a ground out, and a pop out. Papelbon pitched the ninth inning and was much improved over his last few games. He did give up a bizarre little base hit. The ball was popped up high but had very little forward motion. Lowell, Varitek, and Youkilis all circled around it but no one bothered to catch it as it landed halfway to the pitchers mound.

As for offense, Youkilis popped a homerun to left in the second inning-a team-leading eighth of the year. Coco and Lowrie had back-to-back homeruns in the seventh inning. Lowell had a home run in the eighth. And in the ninth, Lowrie hit a single, moved on to second on a sacrifice by Ellsbury, and scored on a single from Pedroia.

And not to always harp on the negative but the ninth inning was the only inning where they successfully moved a baserunner across the plate (which is why the game was only almost good.) On the whole, they've been stranding a lot of baserunners-ten in this game alone. I know that "a win is a win" and I shouldn't complain but it's unlikely that they're going to be able to hit four homeruns a game.