Josh Beckett

The Red Sox and Yankees play the middle game of a three-game series Wednesday night at Fenway Park as the two bitter rivals fight for home field advantage in the playoffs. Boston will turn to Josh Beckett, who looks to continue his hot streak despite making his first start in a week. New York will hope Phil Hughes can turn things around against the Red Sox, as the young right-hander is winless against Boston this season.

Beckett (11-5, 2.43 ERA) is in the middle of his worst month of 2011 so far, which is hard to believe considering he’s 2-1 with a 3.60 ERA in August. The one major blemish came against the Mariners on Aug. 13, when Beckett allowed five runs on eight hits in five innings. His four other outings this month were all quality starts and Red Sox wins.

One of those quality starts came against the Yankees on Aug. 7, when Beckett gave up just one run over six innings. He also held the Rangers to one run over six innings in his last start, a 13-2 win over Texas last Wednesday. One point of concern may be the home run numbers against Beckett; he’s given up at least one longball in each of his last seven starts, including two against the Indians and two against the Mariners. His 16 home runs allowed are the 28th most in the American League.

Beckett has dominated the Yankees in four starts this season, going 3-0 with a 1.00 ERA. The Red Sox haven’t lost to the Yankees in a Beckett start since last August. The 31-year-old wasn’t nearly as successful against New York in 2010, when he went 1-2 with a 10.04 ERA in five starts. Of course, an injury-riddled season left Beckett with a 5.78 ERA for the entire year, compared to his current ERA of 2.43, which ranks fourth in the majors.

The Boston starter has only lost once at Fenway Park this season, a 4-3 defeat at the hands of the Royals on July 28. The game was lost in the fourth inning, when Kansas City scored all four runs thanks to a three-run homer and a fielding error by Drew Sutton. Despite the loss, Beckett is still 4-1 with a 1.95 ERA at home.

The Yankees are hitting .264 with 18 home runs in 543 plate appearances against Beckett. Bobby Abreu is the only player in major league history to have faced the right-hander more than Derek Jeter, and the long-running Jeter-Beckett showdown has yet to find a decisive victor. In 93 matchups, Jeter is hitting .291 with four doubles, two home runs, nine RBIs and twelve strikeouts. Robinson Cano is the only Yankee with a batting average over .300 against Beckett, as he’s hitting .324 with eight doubles and three home runs in 75 plate appearances. Cano isn’t the only Yankee with good power numbers against the Boston starter, as Alex Rodriguez, Nick Swisher and Curtis Granderson also have three home runs against Beckett, while Mark Teixeira has two.

The cards will be stacked against Hughes (4-4, 6.46 ERA) when he takes the mound against the Red Sox ace. The right-hander hasn’t recorded a win against the Red Sox since May 7, 2010, and that was thanks to a 10-run performance from the Yankees offense. It’s been a miserable season for Hughes, as his ERA has never been lower than 5.75 all year.

The 25-year-old has struggled to find a rhythm because of a three-month stint on the disabled list. After showing depleted velocity and allowing 16 runs in his first 10 innings of the season, Hughes was sent to the DL with a shoulder injury. He pitched two of those first 10 innings against the Red Sox on April 8, allowing six runs on seven hits to give Boston its first win of the season.

Earlier this month, Hughes managed to pitch back-to-back quality starts for the first time all year, holding the Twins and Rays under three runs over six-plus innings. However, the streak was snapped by the A’s in his last start, when Hughes allowed six runs in 2 2/3 innings. The Yankees still managed a win, thanks to a league-record three grand slams.

In his last appearance against the Red Sox, Hughes came on to pitch the 10th inning at Fenway Park in a 2-2 game on Aug. 7. After yielding a one-out double to David Ortiz, Hughes gave up a walk-off single to Josh Reddick and took his fourth loss of the year. It wasn’t the first time the right-hander struggled at Fenway Park; over the last three years, Hughes is 2-1 with a 6.00 ERA in Boston.

As a team, the Red Sox are hitting .256 with two home runs in 104 combined plate appearances against Hughes. Ortiz is batting .467 with a home run, three triples and five RBIs in 18 matchups, while Jacoby Ellsbury is 3-for-6 with a double and two walks. Although Boston’s lefties have done well against Hughes, right-handed hitters like Dustin Pedroia and Marco Scutaro have struggled. Pedroia is hitting .200 with a home run and three strikeouts in 17 plate appearances, and Scutaro is at .199 with two strikeouts in his team-high 23 matchups with Hughes.

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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 »

John Lackey

On Thursday, Jon Lester and the Indians’ Fausto Carmona both rebounded from bad first starts with stellar second outings. On Friday, John Lackey and the Yankees’ Phil Hughes will look to do the same in Boston’s home opener. Lackey gave up 10 hits and nine earned runs over 3 2/3 innings in a loss to the Rangers, while Hughes gave up five hits and five earned runs over four innings in a loss to the Tigers.

Hughes is 2-3 with a 4.97 ERA in 13 career games (including six starts) against the Red Sox. Both of those wins came last season, when he went 2-1 with a 3.60 ERA in five games against Boston.

Current Red Sox are hitting .248 off Hughes. J.D. Drew, David Ortiz and Kevin Youkilis have had the most success against him, as all three are hitting .300 or better with a home run and four RBIs. At the other end of the spectrum, Dustin Pedroia is hitting just .077 in 13 at-bats and Jason Varitek and Jed Lowrie are hitless in a combined six at-bats.

Lackey has plenty of experience against the Yankees — his 19 starts against them are the fourth most for him vs. any team — but the numbers don’t really favor either side. He has a 6-8 record and 4.43 ERA, including a 1-1 mark and 3.20 ERA in three starts last season.

Seven current Yankees have faced Lackey more than 40 times and the team is hitting .259 as a whole against him. Mark Teixeira has done the most damage, as he has a .349 average, two homers and 11 RBIs in 72 plate appearances. Alex Rodriguez has a team-high four long balls off Lackey, but he’s hitting just .188 with 27 strikeouts in 64 at bats. Lackey has fanned both Derek Jeter and Nick Swisher 20-plus times as well.

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Peter Gammons

Hall of Fame baseball writer Peter Gammons joined the Mut & Merloni show Wednesday afternoon to talk about the slow-starting Red Sox. To hear the interview, go to the Mut & Merloni audio on demand page.

“They just haven’t had anybody get off to a particularly good start,” Gammons said. “Again, it’s only four games. It is amazing, that statistic that nobody’s ever won the World Series starting 0-4.”

Gammons said the Red Sox didn’t seem as energized when he saw them in Florida, but they were not alone in lacking intensity coming out of spring training.

“Except for the teams that had a lot of competition for positions, it just seemed as if everybody was bored by the 10th or 15th of March this year,” Gammons said. “The Red Sox basically had no jobs open for positions players. It just seemed like spring training mode. What have they won, like two games since March 13 or something? It just seemed a little muted. It didn’t upset me that [Jon] Lester and [Daniel] Bard both seemed a little out of whack, but I think sometimes that does happen to teams, where they have trouble getting going.”

Added Gammons: “It’s not the end of the world, but at the same time, you kind of go: All right, it can’t go too long because they play the Yankees, the Rays and the Jays in the first week-and-a-half of the season at home.”

Gammons said the Sox hitters deviated from the team’s strategy of showing patience and instead started consistently swinging at the first strike Tuesday night in Cleveland. And new outfielder Carl Crawford “is pressing dramatically. I’m not really sure why it’s happening.”

As for Crawford being moved around in the batting order, Gammons predicts he’ll eventually settle into third. “I think Terry [Francona] first and foremost is trying to get Carl comfortable,” Gammons said. “Just, ‘Please, you’re not here to carry the team. You’re here to just be what you’ve been in your major league career, which is a great player. He was out jumping at everything in Texas, and that sort of carried over last night.”

Jarrod Saltalamacchia has caught all four games for the Sox this season. Gammons said that might have to do with Jason Varitek not being at full strength.

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NEW YORK — Naturally, the Yankees suggested that it was not a panic move, even though it represented a complete reversal in the span of 48 hours. On Friday, New York decided that it was in their best interests to skip Phil Hughes‘ scheduled Sunday start against the Red Sox to keep him rested and healthy with the playoffs losing. Two losses to the Red Sox later, the Yankees reversed course and decided that Hughes — and not scheduled fill-in Dustin Moseley — would take the ball.

The change did not affect the Red Sox significantly. The team, said manager Terry Francona, kept the same lineup that would have faced Moseley. Even so, the decision by the Yankees suggests that they continue to view the Red Sox as a threat to their postseason ambitions. With New York’s lead in the wild card down to 5 1/2 games, the Yankees decided they needed to do what they could to increase the chances of winning on Sunday.

Rest took a back seat to the need to win. A pair of Sox victories — the latest in a stretch that has seen the Yankees go 6-13 — has tightened the collective collar in the Bronx.

“They’re in a situation where they have to win games. The pressure is on them. It doesn’t surprise me that they’re going to throw Hughes,” said Sox shortstop Jed Lowrie. “It’s good to put somebody in that position, see how they react.”

On Friday, Bill Hall said that the Sox were not looking to be spoilers, and that they instead wanted to run the table on the rest of the regular season to try to make a run at a playoff spot. The move to start Hughes (17-8, 4.31) would suggest that the Yankees are concerned about the possibility of just such an ambitious goal coming to fruition.

“It just shows we’re doing our job, and that we’re doing what we came here to do, which is win. We’re just looking to finish it off today, run out the rest of the year and see what happens,” said Hall. “If we start thinking that’s cool, that means we think the job is over. The job is not over.

“I think [the Yankees] thought that [the Red Sox were a threat] coming in, but at the same time, they thought they had a big enough lead that they could start resting some people. The reality is that didn’t happen, so now they’ve got to turn the page back.”

The Yankees insisted that their outlook had not changed, and instead that they are simply still trying to accomplish the same goals with which they’ve been concerned all along.

“We need to win games,” Yankees manager Joe Girardi said. “We’re still trying to win our division. We’re still trying to get into the playoffs. We’re still trying to get home field advantage and we’re going to go with Hughsie.”

Even so, the move — about which Girardi informed Francona at approximately 4 p.m. — suggested that, at the least, the Yankees were striking a defensive posture; at worst, they are panicking about he possibility of a collapse. And that development is, at the least, intriguing as Hughes — who was informed on Saturday night that he would start on Sunday — readies to face Daisuke Matsuzaka.

OTHER PREGAME NOTES:

–Mike Lowell should be available as a pinch-hitter on Sunday night, and with the Sox facing some left-handed starters in Chicago against the White Sox, manager Terry Francona anticipates that Lowell will be in the lineup at some point (or points) during the White Sox series.

–Clay Buchholz left at about 5 p.m. to fly to Chicago. Francona said the Sox encourage the starter for the first game of a series to fly ahead, and that he was pleased that the right-hander would be able to go to sleep by about midnight. The rest of the team is scheduled to land after 5 a.m.

NEW YORK — In a surprise development, the Yankees will start Phil Hughes instead of Dustin Moseley against the Red Sox on Sunday night. Joel Sherman of the New York Post was the first to report the decision.

Hughes is 17-8 with a 4.31 ERA, while Moseley is 4-3 with a 4.94 mark. On Friday, the Yankees had made the decision to skip Hughes, who has thrown a career-high 169 1/3 innings, in favor of Moseley in hopes of preserving the arm of their 24-year-old right-hander. But that decision occurred at a time when the Yankees were 7 1/2 games up in the division; with the Red Sox having trimmed the deficit to 5 1/2 games with victories in each of the first two contests of the three-game series in Yankee Stadium, New York made its decision to reverse its decision.

“I don’t think it’s panic,” Yankees GM Brian Cashman told the Post. “It is adjusting to circumstances. We haven’t had starters going deep into games. People can judge this and call it panic. I don’t care. I only care about making the right decision on the information in front of us. And the information is different on Sept. 26 than it was when we decided (to push back Hughes). I only care about being right, and this was right.”

Hughes is 1-1 with a 4.50 ERA in three starts against the Red Sox this year; Moseley is 1-0 with a 2.84 ERA in one start against the Sox. The Sox will send Daisuke Matsuzaka to the hill against Hughes.

NEW YORK — The setting is placid.

The Red Sox are in Yankee Stadium, but the weekend series feels only slightly more meaningful than a Grapefruit League game. The Yankees and Rays have separated themselves from the depleted Red Sox, and so tonight marks the opener of a series in which the Red Sox are hoping they do not have to watch the Yankees celebrate a playoff berth.

“I wish we were eight games up,” conceded Sox manager Terry Francona. “I’m not real happy with where we are in the standings, but I don’t know if I had any different feeling coming to the ballpark today. This is a fun place to play games.”

A few notes:

–Entering the year, Darnell McDonald had 156 career big league plate appearances in his 13 pro seasons. This year, at 31, he has more than doubled that total, with 344 plate appearances. Francona praised the outfielder, suggesting that he has solidified his status as a legitimate big leaguer.

“I think he’s turned himself into a major league player,” said Francona. “He can go home this winter and come to camp next year knowing he’s a big leaguer. I don’t know if he could have done that before.”

McDonald’s major league salary calls for him to make $460,000 this year (prorated for the duration of his time in the majors). At the end of this season, he will have less than two years of service time, so the Red Sox control his rights and he will not be eligible for salary arbitration.

–Jed Lowrie has played in 45 of his team’s 56 games since being activated from the disabled list in mid-July, and he has been product as a semi-regular member of the lineup. He enters Friday hitting .261 with an .833 OPS, as well as 18 extra-base hits (six homers, 12 doubles) in just 158 plate appearances.

While Francona suggested that the versatile infielder is still trying to regain strength following his months-long bout with mono, the manager suggested that it appears that Lowrie’s left wrist — which limited him down the stretch in 2008, and then largely wiped out his 2009 campaign after he underwent surgery on it — is no longer a hindrance.

“With his wrist, I think he’s doing really well. You see him swing the bat, and I know he has to treat it and everything, but I think he looks pretty strong,” said Francona. “I think, as far as the mono goes, I’m hopeful that when you see him next spring you’ll see a little more bounce in his step. He looks to me like he’s still a half-step slower than he was, which I think is understandable. He’s not really a guy that, again, playing a major-league shortstop, he’s not blessed with a lot of footspeed. So, that’s kind of something he needs to stay on top of, and I know he will.

“But … he’s been playing a ton. We’ve tried to give him an occasional day off, just because I think he deserves it because of what he’s gone through, and playing him into the ground doesn’t do anybody any good. But it’ll be interesting to see where he goes from here,” Francona added. “Kind of a nice potential dilemma. At worst, you’ve got a guy who swings the bat from both sides of the plate that can play first, second, third and short.”

–Phil Hughes has thrown 169 innings for the Yankees this year. Prior to 2010, he had never logged more than 146 innings in a professional season, and had never thrown more than 86 frames in the big leagues. And so, the Yankees have made the decision to skip Hughes in this series in hopes of saving his bullets for the postseason.

“There’s an innings limit on him that he will come in on,” said Yankees GM Brian Cashman. “This year, we had a much easier time managing it because we didn’t have so many injuries like we did during the Joba [Chamberlain] time. So we were able to skip him a few times early when he was going real well.”