Dylan Hernandez of The Los Angeles Times reports that the Dodgers have acquired 33-year-old Juan Rivera from the Blue Jays for a player to be named or cash considerations. The team also reportedly designated Marcus Thames for assignment.

Rivera hit .243 with six home runs and 28 RBI for Toronto this season, and is expected to play first base and left field in L.A. The Dodgers entered the All-Star break in fourth place in the NL West and rank 26th in runs scored.

Tim Wakefield

Tim Wakefield will square off against Ricky Romero in Wednesday’s series finale at Fenway Park. Both pitchers will make their first starts against an American League opponent since mid-June, and both hurlers posted rather different interleague numbers this season. Wakefield struggled in his last two starts against the Astros and Pirates, while Romero shut down the Phillies, Cardinals and Braves in his last three outings.

Wakefield (4-3, 4.82 ERA) will look to rebound from a shaky start against Houston, when he gave up five runs on 11 hits over 5 1/3 innings. Wakefield has cooled off after winning three of his first four starts, posting a 2-2 record and 5.48 ERA in his last five outings. The knuckleballer gave up five runs in each of his last two appearances and hasn’t logged a quality start since June 19.

The Blue Jays have 155 combined plate appearances against Wakefield but have been held to just two home runs and a .226 team batting average. Five Toronto regulars have seen Wakefield at least 10 times, and none of those hitters has an average over .286. That number belongs to Aaron Hill, whose team-high 37 plate appearances vs. Wakefield have yielded 10 hits, a double, two RBIs and six strikeouts. Yunel Escobar has hit the Boston starter well in seven plate appearances, logging two singles and a home run. Wakefield has dominated Corey Patterson in 18 meetings, holding him to a .167 average and striking him out three times.

Romero (7-7, 2.75 ERA) is the undisputed ace of the Blue Jays staff, leading the team in wins, ERA, and strikeouts (99). It’s been an up-and-down season for Romero to say the least; after losing three of his first four decisions, he won four of five to bring his record to 5-4. However, a recent 2-3 stretch has put him back at .500. While he might not have too many wins to show for it, Romero has been stellar in his last four starts. Dating back to June 15, he’s posted an ERA of 1.49, including a complete-game shutout of the Cardinals on June 26.

Despite Romero’s impressive numbers, the Red Sox have handled him with relative ease. Back on April 18, Romero was lit up for five runs on eight hits before being pulled with one out in the fifth inning. As a team, Boston is hitting .380 off the Blue Jays starter with 10 doubles, one home run and 19 RBI. J.D. Drew has led the way, hitting a torrent 11-for-22 against Romero, including a home run, a triple and five walks. David Ortiz has performed nearly as well, hitting .435 with a home run and seven RBI in 27 career plate appearances. Kevin Youkilis has a team-high two home runs off Romero.

Read the rest of this entry »

John Lackey

John Lackey will look to rebound from a horrendous start last Thursday against the Angels when he takes on the Blue Jays Wednesday night. He gave up eight runs on 10 hits and three walks over four innings in that last outing, picking up his fourth loss of the season in the process. It marked the third time this season Lackey has given up at least six runs, although it was his first non-quality start in four outings, as he had allowed just three runs in his previous three starts combined.

Lackey is 4-5 with a 4.58 ERA in 15 career starts against the Blue Jays. He faced them four times last year and did not fare well, as he came away with a 1-2 record and 8.61 ERA.

Current Jays are batting .254 against Lackey. Adam Lind has absolutely destroyed him, as he is 10-for-18 with five RBIs. Luckily for Lackey, Lind will likely miss the game with back spasms, according to the Toronto Sun. Jose Bautista has two home runs, but those are his only two hits in 11 at-bats (although he also has five walks). Six of the eight Jays with nine or more ABs against Lackey are hitting under .200.

Getting the start for Toronto will be Jesse Litsch, who is 3-2 with a 4.04 ERA this season. Litsch has gone at least six innings in five of his six starts this year, but he has yet to go more than 6 1/3 in any of those outings. Most recently, he picked up a victory over the Tigers by allowing one run on four hits and three walks over 6 1/3 innings.

Litsch won four of his first five decisions against the Sox, but he’s lost the last two, including his only start against them last season. Current Sox are hitting .262 against him. Carl Crawford, Jacoby Ellsbury and Darnell McDonald are all batting at least .333 with a homer. Jason Varitek and Jed Lowrie have struggled the most, as they are a combined 1-for-15. Read the rest of this entry »

Opening Day represented grounds for confusion about Jon Lester. The left-hander allowed five runs and three homers in 5 1/3 innings against the Rangers; he did not strike out a single batter. Something between confusion and concern permeated New England.

Since that day? There’s no more confusion. Lester is 4-0 with a 1.54 ERA that ranks as the lowest in the American League since the second day of the season. Over 41 innings, he’s struck out more than a batter an inning (10.1 per nine innings) while yielding just 3.1 walks per nine frames. He’s allowed just two homers — one fewer than his Opening Day yield — in his past six starts. Read the rest of this entry »

Bobby Jenks allowed four runs in just one-third of an inning. (AP)

The Red Sox insist that they are better than a two-win team. They just have yet to play like one.

The team’s woeful start to 2011 continued, as the Sox dropped a 7-6 decision to the Blue Jays. Strike-throwing (or lack thereof) played a major roll in Friday night’s struggle, as both Clay Buchholz (94 pitches, 46 strikes) and Bobby Jenks (26 pitches, 14 strikes) could not command the baseball. Those two pitchers permitted seven runs, and the 7-3 hole that Jenks left behind him proved too deep for the Sox to escape, as a three-run rally in the eighth inning fell short.

Clearly, the natives are restless. The Sox earned plenty of boos from their home crowd as their record dropped to 2-10.

WHAT WENT WRONG FOR THE RED SOX

–Bobby Jenks endured one of the worst games of his career. He allowed a career-high four runs and matched a career high by allowing four hits while retiring just one batter in the seventh inning. The reliever appeared to have little life or command of his fastball, which mostly remained in the low-90s. Jenks absorbed his first loss as a member of the Sox.

–Clay Buchholz didn’t give up a homer for the first time this season (thanks in part to having an Adam Lind liner down the right-field line that was initially ruled a homer overturned by replay), but he was still ultimately ineffective. Though he gave up just three hits, he matched a career high by walking five batters. He allowed three runs in his five frames, falling short of the six-inning, three-run standard for quality starts. The Sox have just three quality starts in their 12 games this year.

–Carl Crawford‘s brutal start in Boston continued. He went 0-for-5 while making terrible contact (though he was victimized by a missed call at first base on what would have been an infield single), and he also appeared to pull up on what might have been a playable ball in the gap in left-center that became a game-tying double. His average now sits at .137.

–It was a bad game for Jarrod Saltalamacchia, both behind the plate and at the dish. He went 0-for-3 with a pair of strikeouts (both looking) on fastballs, dropping his average for the year to .138. Eventually, he was lifted in the eighth inning for pinch-hitter Jed Lowrie (who delivered a bases-loaded infield single). As for Saltalamacchia’s defensive work, not only was he the signal caller for the Sox’ brutal pitching outing, but he also had poor technical execution on a wild pitch by Jenks, coming out of his stance too early and letting the ball scoot under his glove, and the Jays ran wild against him, swiping four bags.

WHAT WENT RIGHT FOR THE RED SOX

–Kevin Youkilis hit his first homer of the season, pounding a Brett Cecil pitch into the center field bleachers. He pushed his average up to .200, and he also collected a pair of walks (his 14th and 15th of the year, among the major league leaders). Overall, he has shown signs in recent games that he is starting to emerge from the funk in which he started the year.

–Dustin Pedroia also went deep, giving the Sox their second multi-homer game of the year (and first since April 2). The Sox had entered the game tied for the fewest multi-homer games in the majors.

–Jed Lowrie continued his noteworthy contributions despite his inconsistent presence in the starting lineup. He had a tremendous at-bat as a pinch-hitter in the eighth, which ended with a run-scoring infield single. He is now hitting .471 in the young season.

–The Yankees lost, so the Sox remained “just” five games back in the division.

Former Red Sox pitching coach John Farrell, in his introduction as the Toronto Blue Jays manager on Monday afternoon, expressed his gratitude to the Sox for the opportunity they gave him to return to the field at the same time that he made clear his desire to compete with Boston. The man whom Toronto GM Alex Anthopoulos heralded, “first and foremost, [a]s a leader,” suggested that he pursued the Blue Jays job because he identified a team with the resources — both in terms of talent and financial — to pursue championships.

“We have a common bond here. Going through this interview process, it became very clear, the direction this organization is heading, the resources that are available to support a club that is going to compete and compare with New York and Boston in time. Those were all selling points to me,” Farrell, who will wear No. 52 with Toronto, said at the press conference to introduce him as manager. “I come here and share the same vision that [Anthopoulos and team president Paul Beeston] do, and that’s to win a World Series.”

Farrell said the opportunity with the Blue Jays was clearly more compelling than previous ones he’d been presented with (whether interviews about managerial openings with the Indians, Mariners or Pirates, all of which he declined) in part because he had seen at some length the significant potential of a Blue Jays team that finished 2010 with an 85-77 record on the strength of a lineup that set a franchise record for home runs and a young, talent-laden rotation that features Ricky Romero, Brandon Morrow, Shaun Marcum and Brett Cecil.

“I think it’s clear, no matter of whether it’s on the Red Sox side of the field or the other side of the field, what’s taking place here,” said Farrell. “It didn’t give the impression of a one-year wonder. You saw the youth, talent in the rotation. … The ultimate goal is to sustain this, not to say we did it one year, but to say we did it year over year.”

Farrell said that his experience pitching in Toronto in the early-1990s, when the SkyDome (now the Rogers Centre) was sold out nightly, made the idea of managing the Blue Jays even more appealing. He suggested that there was potential for Toronto, when it is ready to contend, to operate with the resources of a large-market team (Toronto, he noted, is the fourth largest market in North America) that can acquire free agents to complement the talented, largely homegrown core of the club.

Already, he views the team as having a number of components needed to make headway in the AL East.

“There is a lot of work to be done, yet [there are] strengths of this ballclub, which center around a young pitching staff, a very good starting core, an offense that set records with the home run ball,” said Farrell. “We also know that in this division, it’s extremely difficult to compete. … It’s an extremely challenging division.

“We can assemble a team to [compete]. We know that we have to earn the trust of our fans. That’s where coming back to the vision of winning a World Series is here,” said Farrell. “Working off the strengths of the individuals on this roster, we can achieve that.”

If the Blue Jays put themselves in position to compete for a championship, Farrell said that he received assurances that Toronto will be able to carry a payroll to support such ambitions.

“Tampa’s been able to do it on a much lower payroll. I think the most important thing is how efficient we are as an organization. … At the right time, there’s an ability to sign free agents to augment the roster that’s currently in place,” said Farrell. “We know we’re not going to be at the level of New York, per se. At the same time, there’s going to be the ability to compete.

“This is where conversations got very pointed with Alex,” Farrell added. “At the right time, there’s going to be an ability to support a very strong payroll.”

Farrell said that the goal of the Jays will be to rank in the top five of the American League in runs scored and runs prevented, suggesting that doing so bodes well for teams with World Series aspirations. He also said that the Jays will retain pitching coach Bruce Walton and third-base coach Brian Butterfield. (Butterfield was one of the other finalists for the managerial vacancy.)

The 48-year-old Blue Jays manager took time to thank the Red Sox — starting with manager Terry Francona for the opportunity he had in Boston. He praised Francona’s managerial style, in which he “never wavered” in support of his players, leading to a clubhouse atmosphere where members of the roster “wanted to run through a wall for him.”

“Tito, the last four years standing beside you have been a tremendous learning experience,” said Farrell. “The opportunity that you and [the Red Sox front office] afforded me in Boston is really what allowed me to make this progression to come here today.”

Anthopoulos said that ultimately, while it represented a plus that Farrell was experienced with the AL East and while some might view it as a drawback that he had an on-field background solely with pitchers (first as a big league pitcher, then as a pitching coach), ultimately, neither of those elements was important in the selection of Farrell.

“It was irrelevant to me what position he played, because he showed all of the other criteria that were important. … [Knowledge of the division] was part of it, but the person was more important than anything else,” said the Toronto GM. “It came down to the person and the things we were going to value.”

Just as was the case for the Sox when they tabbed Farrell as a pitching coach, and when they did everything in their power to retain him when other teams asked to interview him about managerial vacancies, the Blue Jays reached the conclusion that they had found their man. And Farrell, for his part, believes that he has found the right organization in which to cut his managerial teeth.

“I’m anxious to get started,” Farrell said. “I’m anxious to grab this situation wholeheartedly.”

Terry Francona and John Farrell have been close ever since the two were in Cleveland as players in 1988. When the Red Sox manager was able to hire Farrell to be a pitching coach in the offseason following 2006, it was a thrill — both because it would give him an opportunity to work with a close friend, and because of the value he knew that Farrell would bring to the Sox.

The two had four seasons together, spanning three playoff campaigns and a World Series win. But today, Farrell is being introduced as the manager of the Toronto Blue Jays, and so Francona will have to brace for life without his longtime right-hand man in the dugout. That being the case, it was a moment for Francona both to take stock of what Farrell meant to the Sox organization and to think about what his departure means.

“The fact that he was there, like a pillar, for four years, I feel really lucky,” Francona told WEEI.com. “I would say every person he’s come into contact with, [he’s impacted]. How many times do you get lucky enough where it’s one of your best friends in the whole world, and someone you respect as a worker besides, you get to stand next to him for four years through a lot of ups and downs. He had a very calming effect and made me feel a lot more confident in what I was doing.”

Farrell’s impact on the organization, Francona suggested, was felt in numerous ways. There was the work with developing pitcher’s arsenals and finding their mechanics. There was the in-game advice offered to Francona. There was the work in developing elite young pitching talents, most notably Jon Lester, Clay Buchholz and Daniel Bard. There were the personnel decisions that Farrell helped to influence, such as the decision not to trade Lester.

In short, his impact was felt in fairly far-reaching fashion, something that merely reinforced the conventional wisdom that he is one of the few people in the game capable of succeeding in a front office or in a dugout as a pitching coach or manager.

“There’s a reason people want him. There’s a reason we wanted him, there’s a reason Cleveland wanted him, that Toronto now wants him for different jobs,” said Francona. “He can do whatever he wants. He’s kind of a rare talent. He’s good at a lot of things, and on top of that, he’s a great person. That’s a great combination.”

That talent now will become something of a detriment to the Red Sox. Farrell, a man who knows the Boston pitching staff intimately, can’t help but offer the Blue Jays a competitive advantage when the Sox play Toronto.

“I don’t see where it will help. That’s the one thing, I wish he was in a different division. We spend our whole life trying to find ways to win games. To face one of your best friends 18 or 19 times isn’t the most fun. Somebody is going to go home being mad. I hope it’s him,” said Francona. “I wish that was different. But that’s the only negative I see. He’s very deserving. We knew this was going to happen, and I’m thrilled for him. That far outweighs the negatives.”

The Sox, Francona said, will talk to both internal and external candidates. The process will not be rushed, and the manager said there is “no timetable” for finding Farrell’s replacement. For now, the Sox merely know that they lost someone who became a key figure in the organization over his four years.

“I knew he wouldn’t be here forever,” said Francona. “But having him here for whatever time, I think we all felt was worth it.”