Dustin Pedroia is left looking for answers.

Dustin Pedroia knows how bad the Red Sox are playing. It’s so bad that he knows the win total for the month of September but has lost track of the losses. The latest one, of course, came via a 6-4 meltdown at the hands of the Orioles when Josh Beckett, of all people, couldn’t hold a 4-1 lead Wednesday night heading into the seventh inning.

“We’re not playing good,” Pedroia said. “It’s obvious. You don’t win games. What are we this month? Five and …”

He knew the five wins part but had lost track of the losses. Told it’s 16 losses in September, Pedroia didn’t hide his disgust.

“That’s a sign of a [expletive] team. Good teams don’t 5-16 in any month.”

Then came the predictable questions. Is the team pressing?

“I’m not pressing,” Pedroia said. “I don’t think anyone else is. We’re just not winning. That’s it.”

Has the problem become more mental than physical?

“What do you mean? Who’s mental? I don’t know, man. I show up here ready to win. So does everyone else,” Pedroia said. “We need to score more runs than them. We didn’t do that. We haven’t done that in a while.”

What else could the Red Sox try to kick-start their motor?

Anything left we can try? We can play better. That’s basically it.”

Does turning around the season after losing the first six games and opening 2-10 show they are capable of doing the same now?

“I hope,” he said. “It’s the same guys. Hopefully, it can.”

Carl Crawford was back in the swing of things Wednesday, falling a homer shy of the cycle.

To Carl Crawford, Wednesday would’ve been the perfect game to mark his return to prominence in Red Sox nation and calm the fears of those who have lost faith that the team will realize its October dreams.

He was signed to a seven-year, $142 million contract last winter to do exactly what he did on Wednesday night – produce big hits in big situations in the biggest of games in Boston.

He certainly fit the bill Wednesday when he tripled leading off the third and scored to tie the game, 1-1. He doubled home two runs in the next inning to snap a 1-1 tie and he added a single as the Red Sox built a 4-1 lead.

All of those thoughts and doubts about the timing of his stiff neck on Monday, the pressure getting to him and his polite declining to talk to the media went by the wayside as it appeared the Red Sox were on their way to a crucial win.

“For me, right now anything I do positive is big for me so I’m just trying to gain some confidence going into the postseason and hopefully I can just get better with every game,” said Crawford, who despite a .348 average on the homestand, came in trying to quell those who wondered about his ability to handle the stress of Boston. “Hopefully, we’ll go to the playoffs and it’ll carry over and that’s what you’d like to think, we’ll get hot at the right time. Read the rest of this entry »

Terry Francona says it's beyond a stretch to think Clay Buchholz will start again this season.

Terry Francona is willing to try anything right now in the name of winning a game and inching his team closer to the playoffs.

That includes some lineup juggling as was the case Wednesday for the regular season home finale with the Orioles.

Francona moved one of his hottest hitters – Mike Aviles – up to second in the batting order while dropping Dustin Pedroia down to fifth. The move was an obvious effort to try and provide more protection for Adrian Gonzalez and David Ortiz in the middle of the order.

“We’re missing Youk and I think the way Aviles is swinging so well right now, we’ll hit him second, he can run a little bit, he’s hot and we’ll have Pedey protect David and Gonzy,” Francona said.

There are some trade-offs, namely not having Pedroia at the top of the order where he is guaranteed more chances to hit.

“I talk to Pedey today. I didn’t want to do it without him [knowing]. I just think the next couple, three days, who knows, just today, I just think it puts us in the best position. Pedey’s not being demoted.

“I actually think he likes hitting at the top of the order and I actually like him hitting there because he has a chance to hit one more time but he can hit anywhere.”

Kevin Youkilis (sports hernia, hip) and J.D. Drew (finger) are both expected to test their injuries on Friday at Yankee Stadium in an effort to see if either or both might be able to contribute in the final six games.

After his 32-pitch simulated game on Tuesday at Fenway, Clay Buchholz reported no unusual pain or stiffness in his lower back, a very encouraging sign for the Red Sox. This leaves open the possibility he might be able to contribute out of the bullpen down the stretch, perhaps in Baltimore if a playoff berth is on the line.

“The good thing is normal stiffness, maybe down his side from getting some extension that he’s not used to,” Francona said. “No repercussions, which is really good news. He’ll either throw again tomorrow or Friday. We just want to see how he’s feeling, travel, getting the field on Friday. There’s some things we need to sift through. Read the rest of this entry »

As was the case Tuesday on this dropped liner, Josh Reddick and the Red Sox can't seem to get a grip right now.

Sure, many Red Sox fans will point to the eighth-inning meltdown of Daniel Bard and Jonathan Papelbon in the ugly 7-5 loss to the Orioles that robbed the Sox of a chance to build their wild-card lead to three games.

But as Papelbon was going on his five-minute mea culpa, Josh Reddick stood by his locker with an ice wrap on his banged up left wrist and thought about the third-inning line drive that drastically changed the landscape of the game.

With two outs and one run in against starter Erik Bedard, Vladimir Guerrero scorched a liner to right field that had plenty of hang-time to be caught. But Reddick misread just how much time he had and broke in far too soon. By the time he realized it, he backed up and leaped for the ball. He appeared to have corrected his mistake just in time as the ball went into the web of his glove.

But to the dismay of Bedard, the Red Sox, everyone inside Fenway and obviously Reddick himself, the ball fell to the turf. Three runs and 18 pitches later, Bedard had been knocked out of the game while Reddick had been left to wonder “what if” out in right field by himself.

“Just misread it,” Reddick explained. “I came in and he obviously hit it harder than I thought he did and it kept going. I jumped a little too late and just got it off the end of the glove. Just a bad read.

“It’s the worst feeling ever, knowing you made your starting pitcher work a lot harder than he should have on a ball that should’ve been caught to end the inning, especially losing the lead like we did. There’s no worse feeling, and with the pitching change that we had, you have to stand out there and deal with the fact that you didn’t help at all. It’s somewhere where you don’t want to me.” Read the rest of this entry »

Ellsbury in full stride standing up as he crosses the plate after his first career inside-the-park HR Monday night.

All the Red Sox have to do is score 18 runs to feel safe. And it’s becoming more apparent that – when not facing the Rays pitching staff – they are more than capable of doing so.

They’ve done it twice in the first eight games of the homestand, with the latest coming in a 20-hit, 18-9 massacre of the Orioles pitching staff Monday night in Game 2 that salvaged a split of the day-night doubleheader.

The problem is, they’ve won just one of the other six games.

But on Monday night, the Red Sox lineup played like it was mid-July, putting up fantasy football-type numbers and leading the way was Jacoby Ellsbury with another career first.

Before Monday night, the lightning-fast Ellsbury always joked about what it would feel like to run around the bases when he hit the ball in just the right spot of Fenway for an inside-the-park home run.

Leading off the seventh, with the Red Sox leading by just two, he drilled a Jeremy Accardo pitch to just that spot – the top of the metal railing on the side of the center field triangle. As the ball caromed away from center fielder Matt Angle, he sped around the bases. It was pretty obvious when Ellsbury hit second base, this would be the night. He scored standing for the first such homer since Kevin Youkilis on May 28, 2007 against the Indians.

“When I hit I was hoping it was going to get out, and once I saw it hit the wall I saw it carom and I thought I had a pretty good shot at getting an inside the park home run,” Ellsbury said. “And when I saw [third base coach Tim Bogar] waving me, I knew it was going to happen.”

Ellsbury was asked what was more thrilling – his inside-the-park HR or when he stole home against the Yankees on April 26, 2009.

“Definitely stealing home, but the inside-the-park home run was fun as well,” Ellsbury said. “But I’ve got to give it to the steal of home. Read the rest of this entry »

Darnell McDonald had a nightmare in the daytime filling in for Carl Crawford.

In spite of everything, Dustin Pedroia is maintaining his confidence and he is sure the Red Sox will do the same.

After a 6-5 loss to the Orioles in which a crucial call went against them and Darnell McDonald had a nightmare of a third inning filling in for Carl Crawford, Pedroia reminded everyone that they still lead the American League wild card race over the Rays and Angels and promised his teammates will fight to the very end.

“We’re not quitting,” Pedroia said after his team fell to 4-14 in September. “We’ve got the lead. We’ve got to go out there and play better. That’s basically it. I’m not hanging my head. I’m going out there and playing hard, and so is everybody else. So, that’s it. We’re going to play. We’ve got nine more baseball games. We’ll see what happens in the end.”

The Red Sox fell behind 6-1, only to battle back with four runs and close it to 6-5 in the seventh. But they could do nothing in the eighth and ninth against the Orioles bullpen, falling to 2-5 on the current 10-game homestand.

“I thought we played alright,” Pedroia said. “We just didn’t score as many as they did. They hit some home runs. I thought we swung the bat good. We hit into some tough luck. We’ll come out, play hard. That’s all we can do. Show up, play hard and we’ll see what happens.”

“Today felt different,” Jarrod Saltalmacchia said of Game 1. “For me, I felt pretty good going into it. I felt pretty excited. I felt like we started to turn things around and started with this first game. First three or four innings went pretty good and then we give up a few runs but still didn’t feel out of it and then we obviously started scoring a more runs. We feel good. It’s just hard to say. Things just didn’t fall our way.” Read the rest of this entry »

David Ortiz and the Sox were fuming after a fifth-inning call went against Boston. (AP)

The easy and obvious way to look at the fifth inning of Monday’s first game is to say it’s simply a microcosm of the disastrous month of September for the Red Sox.

They fall behind 6-1 only to make a mid-game rally, with several line drive hits off the bats of their most important batters. And then an umpire misses a crucial call that costs them a run that would’ve tied the game.

With two runs already in during a two-out rally and Dustin Pedroia standing on third, David Ortiz lined a frozen rope down the right field line. The ball caromed off the Scott’s lawn sign and rolled out to Nick Markakis. But first base umpire Mike Estabrook didn’t see it that way.

He saw the ball hitting just to the right of the foul line on the wall, taking away what would’ve been a run-scoring double to make it a one-run game. Instead, the Red Sox lost the run and the game, 6-5, falling to 4-14 in September and watching their wild-card lead dwindle to 1 1/2 games over the Rays.

“It’s just a break in the game, they got it, that’s basically it,” Pedroia said. “We’ve played a 100-whatever games and we’re not going to say our season is over because an umpire missed a call. We’re better than that. Yeah, it’s frustrating, another hit, it’s a big hit but it didn’t go our way.”

Terry Francona – after getting a signal from first base coach Ron Johnson that it was clearly fair – came out to protest and had no doubt it was fair, especially after seeing the replay.

“I know it was, by about a foot-and-a-half,” Francona said. “I know it’s a tough corner. They can’t get replay because it’s not a home run so I ask him, ‘Can you ask everybody?’”

That’s exactly what home plate umpire Mike Winters, second base ump Mark Wegner and third base ump Mike Everitt. No luck. The crew decided that no one had a good enough look to overrule.

“You hate to tell them that but the guys in the dugout, they’ve already seen it,” Francona said. “I’d like to get this call right. I wish they could’ve kept asking somebody else but they ran out of people to ask.”

Pedroia, who would’ve scored, thought it was fair, too.

“I was running down the line,” he said. “It looked fair. You can only replay it if it’s a home run so it was his call and he made it.”

It was Johnson who had the best look of all among those in Red Sox uniform.

“I knew the ball was fair,” Johnson told WEEI.com’s Alex Speier. “I was just watching the Pole. The ball was past the Pole, so I knew the ball was fair,” said Johnson. “To see right down that line I’d have to run down the line and almost look in fair territory to see it. So I just turned, looked, bam, looked at the Pole, ball goes by it. I saw the ball go by it. Then I was kind of baffled. I didn’t understand why there was a delay. Read the rest of this entry »