The Red Sox are still a strong team, even though they haven’t competed as closely with the Yankees as they had been expected to. The team is talented but will be working their way forwards into the playoffs from the Wild Card spot, it would seem. Being about 6 games out of first in the AL East, the team would have to work very hard to get into playoffs that way.But in the Wild Card race, they are ahead of Texas by 3.5 games and it’s going to be interesting to see what happens along the way. If they keep playing as well as they have been, they should have very little problem getting there. If, on the other hand, they start to struggle again, it’s going to be much harder and we’ll have to cross our fingers and toes for a few weeks. Keep cheering on your team, Boston, because I think we’re going to make it!

Brad Penny was released by the team yesterday because he was unable to get onto the starting rotation and wasn’t going to be traded. He was hoping that he would be able to get onto a team in contention at the end of this season, and perhaps that will still happen. He hasn’t been pitching as well as he used to and he was in the bullpen for the last several weeks. While the team released him, indicating a certain level of disappointment on both sides, he said that he was happy for his time on the team and credited them with giving him his career back with their rehab program. It didn’t bring him all the way back to his original health, but it was an impressive result anyhow.

This week, the Red Sox have finally started to meld together and win real games. It’s very exciting to see this team start taking on some of the best teams and really beat them up. They took out the Yankees a couple of times over the weekend and now, against the White Sox, they are breaking out the big bats. When this team finally started to hit really well and score lots of runs in each game, I don’t know, but it’s nevertheless a lot of fun to see this finally happen. After all the disappointment that this team was apparently about to give us, it’s starting to look good again after the Yankees became so strong. We might not take the division, but a Wild Card stop is definitely not out of the question!

JD Drew of the BoSox played a great game last night. Usually a team wont get home runs out of their 8th hitter. But this time, the Red Sox got two solo homers out of JD Drew and this helped the team run to a 6-1 win over the Toronto Blue Jays. There are a lot of people who will be happy to hear this news, because it keeps the team ahead of the Texas Rangers for the wild card. How long will this team take to really click? Well, they just swept the Jays for the second time this year and have won several gamse in a row. Thus, we shall be watching them along the way. The Blue Jays are clearly out of the running, but the Red Sox are pushing for the wild card. They may not catch the Yankees but the Red Sox are still right in the thick of the playoff race.

He’s been a great pitcher for many years. But 2009 was not the right year for him. He has struggled mightily all season and has just a 2-5 record. The Red Sox were hoping to get a really good pitcher on a relatively low salary. John Smoltz was unable to retire players or get much of anything else done on the mound this time around. But now that he’s released, he says he’s open to joining new teams. Hopefully it isn’t one of those situations when another team gets him and gives us trouble down the stretch. Thank you Smoltz for giving it your all and hopefully you find your way into a good groove with another team. Hopefully in the NL! Otherwise, we really have had fun having you on our team!

When the Red Sox jump into the games against the Yankees, it’s interesting to see the contrasts between these two teams. In true Yankee fashion, they spent a lot of money in the offseason getting the best players and, did I already mention spending a LOT of money. The Red Sox, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have real coffers to empty for some of these players. We tried to get great bargain players. It sure looked like a strategy early in the season, but we’ll have to see if it continues to be a good idea. Right now it looks bad because the Yankees are that far ahead of Sox at the moment. It might take a few weeks for us to get ourselves into the race the way that it had been a few months ago.

Brad Penny is one brave guy. He was sick yesterday, but he was on the right part of the rotation that he was up to pitch yesterday. He was able to give it a good go yesterday against the Tigers, holding them down long enough for the Sox to eke out the win, 6-5. Penny has been getting better, and hopefully he’ll be feeling better soon. Either way, he was able to get 93 pitches, even on an evening where he was vomiting before pitching for a couple of innings. If Penny gets himself back on the mound, he will remain one of the strongest pitchers in the game. He just didn’t have much more in the tank. Meanwhile, the race with the Yankees remains strong, though the Sox are more than 5 games out of first place right now. The Red Sox are strong enough to be able to push forwards and it’ll be great to see if they can give the Yankees a challenge now.

The end of this week and the weekend will be dominated by the amazing games that we’ll be playing against the Red Sox. This will be one of the best weekends of the season–provided that the Red Sox win all or most of the games. This year has been good for us so far, because we have won 8 games in a row against the Yankees. But they still have a 2.5 game lead over us, especially after our loss last night against the Tampa Bay Rays. They beat the Toronto Blue Jays yesterday, so the AL East seems to be coming down to this battle between the two teams. The Red Sox are looking very good, but against the Yankees, we can really make a difference in the division. The weekend is going to give us some of the best baseball, but we’d best hope for the team to finally win it out.

The Red Sox have been held down by a lot of scandal in the last week or so. Last week, it was reported that, along with Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz also failed the drug test in 2003, and is one of the 104 baseball players on the list. Clearly they feel that they haven’t actually done anything wrong, because the drug policy wasn’t clear back then, and the players union will surely back them up on that aspect. Meanwhile, we’re waiting to hear what the next shoe to drop might be. Today there is a small report that turns out not to be nearly as serious as the headline made it sound like: the Red Sox fired to security staffers last year due to some kind of drug use. It happened right around the All Star Break. The two workers, who I wont name here, were investigated by the MLB and the team itself. The investigators seemed to want to know more about whether higher level individuals had used drugs/steroids as well. Which the staffers didn’t know, but they were dismissed for the useage. That’s about all there is to it.