Say this much, Carl Crawford has already proved he can overcome a hideous slump in a Red Sox uniform.

After all, he started the season batting .155 for the month of April. He had just a .234 mark heading into June. It appeared he was ready to break out in June before pulling his hamstring running out an infield grounder in an interleague game against the Brewers on June 17. He would miss the next month.

But he and the Red Sox had 142 million very good reasons not to give up on their star left fielder and so they were rightly rewarded when he found his groove immediately after a two-game rehab in Pawtucket.

When he came back, he came back on fire. He had two hits on July 18 in Baltimore, a stretch that began nice run to lift his average to .260 on Aug. 7, culminating with nine hits in 12 at-bats over three games against the Yankees.

But then came the latest road trip. He went 4-for-22 in Minnesota and Seattle. He came home and went 0-for-9 with three strikeouts against the tough Tampa Bay trio of James Shields, Jeff Niemann and David Price.

“Yeah, it’s tough to generate offense when you have three guys coming in pitching as well as they did in this series. They did a good job of pitching their game,” Crawford said.

All of a sudden, here come the questions again after four hits in 31 at-bats to drop his average to .249.

“I was feeling good and this series, for some reason, I just wasn’t myself, whatever the reason was. I struggled this series. I guess I’ve just got to go back and watch some video and start from scratch again.”

But then asked to clarify what he meant by starting “from scratch,” Crawford explained that he just needs to simplify things at the plate.

“Not scratch, but you know, trying to simplify things and get back to the base of everything and just kind of go from there. sometimes you get out of whack a little bit and you’ve just got to make those little adjustments to get back to where you were at.” Read the rest of this entry »

Sunday night, Josh Reddick proved he has been paying attention to the small details.

When J.D. Drew went down with his shoulder injury, there were those who wondered if Reddick would be able to maintain his offensive pace while playing a dependable right field.

Sunday night, on the biggest stage Reddick has been on to date, the 24-year-old validated the trust the organization put in him by calling him up and slotting him in right field on a semi-regular basis.

How?

It wasn’t just the fact that he put a great swing on a good Phil Hughes curveball, it was his preparation and planning leading up to his game-winning hit in the bottom of the 10th that scored Darnell McDonald with the decisive run in Boston’s 3-2 win over the Yankees.

After Kevin Youkilis flied out to center to open the inning, David Ortiz came to the plate and doubled down the right field line, and Reddick was paying close attention.

“I got a first-pitch curveball over the plate and didn’t really miss it,” Reddick said of his opposite-field single off the base of the Green Monster that scored the winning run. “I watched the way he pitched Papi and was sitting on the pitches he started him off with and luckily he did, and I got a hold of it.

“I hit it really well, barreled it up really well, and it was fading toward the line so even with [Brett] Gardner’s speed, I felt like it was going to get there and we had D-Mac running with some fresh legs so I knew he was going to score no matter what.”

Keep in mind, Reddick was 0-for-4 with two strikeouts before his game-winning hit so he had to find other ways to contribute, and he certainly did. Russell Martin lined a base hit down the right field line with one out in the fifth. Reddick put himself in a perfect position for a bounce right to him. Read the rest of this entry »

After blowing the 14th save against the Red Sox in his certain Hall of Fame career, Mariano Rivera took full responsibility, admitting that his trademark cutter pitch to Marco Scutaro that yielded a leadoff double in the ninth was not where he wanted it. Scutaro lined Rivera’s 2-2 pitch high off the Monster in left to start the game-tying rally in the ninth, with the Yankees leading, 2-1.

“It wasn’t the pitch that I wanted it to be,” Rivera said. “It was a little bit down, should’ve been a little bit up. I can’t blame nothing but myself. I didn’t get it done. That’s that.”

Scutaro has a history of dramatics with the Yankees closer, hitting a three-run, game-winning walk-off homer against Rivera when Scutaro played for the A’s on April 15, 2007. Rivera insisted he wasn’t thinking about that when Scutaro led off the ninth on Sunday night.

“I don’t think about it like that,” Rivera said. “If I was thinking like that, I wouldn’t be doing this job. I was just going in there thinking of getting him out as soon as possible, just get him out.”

Rivera nearly got out of his own mess when Jacoby Ellsbury laid down a bunt for the first out, moving Scutaro to third. But Dustin Pedroia lined a ball just deep enough to left for Scutaro to score and tie the game. Josh Reddick gave Boston a 3-2 win the next inning when he singled home pinch-runner Darnell McDonald from second base.

While Rivera hasn’t been perfect this season – as Sunday was his fifth blown save in 34 chances, he still has been dominant. But even back in Rivera’s heyday, the Red Sox always seemed to have a knack for getting to him.

“That’s exciting,” Red Sox manager Terry Francona said afterward. “Anytime you see Mo in the game, it’s not good news. We’re the one team, everyone once in a while, you kind make a chip [in his armor]. That was exciting. Scutaro with a huge hit, Jacoby gets a nice bunt down and Pedey with a good at-bat and we get to keep playing.”

Most famously, of course, there was Game 4 of the 2004 American League Championship Series when Kevin Millar worked his walk and pinch-runner Dave Roberts just got under Derek Jeter’s tag, scoring on Bill Mueller’s hit. In the regular season, the Red Sox have tagged Rivera with 14 blown saves, six more than the next closest teams (Angels and Orioles).

But Rivera still managed to set some history Sunday, making his 1,023rd appearance, passing Jose Mesa and Lee Smith for sole possession of 10th place on baseball’s all-time games-pitched list.

Not a lot for Jorge Posada to be smiling or laughing about right now.

It’s Red Sox-Yankees so that means more fans yelling at one another, slugfests, nine-inning games that turn into four-hour marathons and of course, controversy about Jorge Posada and his decreasing role with the Yankees.

Prior to the series finale with the Red Sox, longtime Yankees catcher-turned-designated hitter seemed resigned to his fate with the team he helped lead to five World Series titles since 1996, and four as a starting catcher since 1998.

His latest dissatisfaction came when Yankees manager Joe Girardi decided to use the newly-added Eric Chavez as the DH against Red Sox ace Josh Beckett. Chavez is finally healthy and ready to contribute and Posada is the odd man out.

So, you figured New York reporters would rush to Posada’s locker in the visitor’s clubhouse at Fenway to get his response. He didn’t disappoint.

“It’s just a flesh wound,” Posada said Sunday afternoon when asked by reporters about riding the bench. “It’s very disappointing. You want to be out there,” Posada said. “But right now it’s about winning ballgames. He told me he wants to put the best lineup out there.”

The benching lies in the stats, as Posada is just 1-for-13 in his last 13 at-bats against the right-hander since homering off of him last year. Posada made headlines earlier in the year when he reportedly told the Yankees he had no interest in starting a game against the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium before his wife tweeted that his back was acting up and that “Jorge loves being a Yankee more than anything.”

Posada is batting just .230 this season with nine homers and 28 RBIs but all of his homers and all but three RBIs have come against right-handed pitching, making Sunday’s move noteworthy.

Some perspective here. When you bench a switch-hitter batting just .230 – including an abysmal .105 against lefties – no one really bats an eye. But this is no ordinary switch-hitter and obviously, no ordinary franchise.

Posada has been the Yankees primary catcher since 1998, arguably the greatest season club history as they won 114 games and the first of three straight World Series titles. He has been on five All-Star teams over his 16-year career. He is the only big league catcher to ever have hit .330 or better with 40 doubles, 20 home runs, and 90 RBIs in a single season.

Posada and Yogi Berra are the only Yankees catchers to hit 30 home runs in a season. Since 2000, Posada has had more runs batted in, home runs, and hits than any other catcher in baseball. Following off-season knee surgery, he was moved to designated hitter for the 2011 season by Girardi. Now it appears, even that role is diminishing.

But more than anything, Posada’s legacy is that of being one of the “Core Four” Yankees, along with Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte.

That group won four World Series titles between 1998 and 2009 and that’s why any news of Posada still matters.

It was the singular showdown of a classic Red Sox-Yankees game at Fenway Park.

With the Red Sox leading, 2-0, they managed to get the bases loaded with two outs against Bartolo Colon. The Yankee starter was pulled by manager Joe Girardi in favor of Boone Logan, a long man in the Yankees pen who is one of the unsung heroes of a surprisingly dominant bullpen.

Into the batter’s box stepped the most dangerous and consistent hitter in the American League this season, Adrian Gonzalez. One would figure the advantage would be in favor of the batter. But Logan wasn’t concerned about the star quality of the batter just getting his team out of a big jam.

“A lefty is a lefty and that’s a big situation, no matter who’s at the plate. You can’t think of it like it’s Gonzalez is at the dish. If you do, that’s when you can probably get in trouble. Just stay confident and go to work.”

And work in this case required just three pitches. Fastball, slider and slider, with the final two coming on uncharacteristically ugly swings from Gonzalez.

“First pitch, coming in figuring he’s looking off-speed,” Logan said. “That’s typically what lefties do, coming in, especially with the bases loaded. I came in there, instead of throwing slider, I went fastball first pitch. He was definitely looking off-speed and then my next [pitch] a slider, which wasn’t one of my better ones, he didn’t look very good on it. I said, ‘If I throw this next slider in the dirt he’ll swing over it.’ And he did.”

Gonzo’s take?

“If I would have been looking slider, I wouldn’t have swung,” Gonzalez said. “Last time we faced him in New York I had a pretty similar situation, bases loaded, and I don’t know if he came in to face me or if he was already in the game, but I worked the count and I was able to get a walk. He usually attacks me with sinkers in, sliders away. So I wanted to see how he was going to attack me early. And he went with a four-seamer down in the zone – good pitch, just at the knees. And I told myself to look fastball, middle-away. And he threw a good slider to put me 0-2 and then I just tried to battle. He dropped down a little bit and I wasn’t able to pull back.

Logan said he was as proud of the relievers behind him as he was to strike out the American League’s best hitter on three pitches, giving his team the chance for the go-ahead rally in the next half-inning.

“It’s awesome when the whole bullpen goes in there and puts up zeros, especially against Boston, keeping a one-run lead from the sixth inning, on,” Logan said of the trio of Rafael Soriano, David Robertson and Mariano Rivera after him. “It’s a great feeling. I’m proud of the guys.”

Red Sox fans have seen this movie before.

An ace pitcher is cruising along against the vaunted Yankee lineup, like Jon Lester was on Friday night. The Sox left had allowed just two hits in five scoreless innings, throwing just 73 pitches in the process.

Then, boom. All of sudden, the Yankees start taking pitches, fouling off pitcher’s pitches and making every swing count. The Yankees still work the pitcher as well as any team in baseball and they proved it again Friday night, trailing 2-0.

Even the best pitchers the Red Sox ever had – like Pedro Martinez, circa 1999 – have fallen victim to this in the last 15 years that Derek Jeter has been a captain. And Jeter was at the middle of things – or more to the point – the start of things on Friday night.

Eduardo Nunez fell behind quickly two strikes to open the sixth, with the Lester and the Red Sox in command, 2-0. Then six pitches – including two foul balls – later, he was on base with a walk. Jeter singled and Curtis Granderson followed with an RBI single to left-center and it was 2-1.

“Just really lost command,” Lester said. “You have to tip your cap to them. They did a good job being patient that inning. I threw some pretty good pitches they laid off, whether it was a ball or strike, they stayed within themselves and it seemed like the first five innings, we dictated both sides of the plate and in the sixth inning, they did.”

Lester would throw his final 35 pitches of the night in that sixth inning as the Yankees rallied for three runs off Lester.

“The first thing was Nunez’s at-bat, the fact that he was able a 3-2 walk after fouling off some really tough pitches,” Granderson said. “I think he threw pretty anything and everything at him. Derek got his first hit of the ball game, I got my first hit. Nunez read it really well and was able to score.” Read the rest of this entry »

Daniel Bard hasn’t gotten this far in his big league career and had the success he’s had without paying attention to the little details.

That’s why Monday’s game might stick in his craw just a little longer than normal.

He threw a pitch – that in hindsight – he had no reason to throw since recent history dictated that you don’t sneak a slider down and in on Asdrubal Cabrera.

And the last thing Bard wanted was to have his career-best 26 1/3 scoreless innings streak end and have it end costing the Red Sox a game. But that’s what happened Monday night when he gave up a two-run homer to Cabrera in the eighth inning, leading the Indians to a 9-6 win over the Red Sox at Fenway.

Ironically, it was Cabrera who last got to Bard for an RBI hit when he doubled off the Sox reliever on May 23 with two outs to help the Indians to a 3-2 win in Cleveland. Between that May 23 appearance and Monday night, when he shook off Jarrod Saltalamacchia and went to a slider to Cabrera, Bard had gone 25 straight outings without allowing a run.

The second Cabrera homer of the night came on a 1-2 pitch, a slider that Bard was trying to sneak past Cabrera. Instead, it was blasted like a rocket to right, caroming off a fan’s left knee and flying back out to right fielder Josh Reddick. After ruling it initially a single, the umpires went back in and looked more closely. Verdict: Ball struck the fan sitting down clearly on the other side of the fence and in fair territory.

“Apparently, hit a lady in the knee,” Bard said after seeing the stitches from the ball leave a mark in the woman’s left knee. “From my perspective it looked like it stayed in the park but it looks like they got it right. The pitch to Cabrera I thought was a pretty good pitch and I didn’t realize Lackey had thrown him quite of few of those same sliders down and in. I think he was probably sitting on that one. So I probably should’ve stayed hard with him there. Read the rest of this entry »