On Pro Baseball
Mike Grenier
The ultra-confident Josh Beckett may have to wait until next season to reclaim his title as the Red Sox ace.
He might not be able to do it then, either.
The new darling of Sox fans, and the indisputable ace of the team, is 24-year-old Jon Lester (16-6 in the regular season). And for one night, anyway, young shortstop Jed Lowrie wasn't far behind after a stunning 3-2 series clinching victory over the Los Angeles Angels in the first round of the playoffs.
Boston now moves on to play the upstart Tampa Bay Rays in the best-of-seven American League Championship Series, which starts Friday at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla.
It took the seemingly unflappable rookie Lowrie to bail out Boston in the bottom of the ninth after the bullpen gagged on a 2-0 lead as Hideki Okijima and Justin Masterson allowed the Angels to tie it up with a pair of runs in the eighth.
Jason Bay, who still might be underrated as a late-season pickup by the Sox, set the table in the ninth when he dumped a ground-rule double down the right field. Facing a tough reliever, Scot Shields, Lowrie poked a single to right and Bay raced home with the winning run.
"In the back of my mind, I thought (Shields) might throw me a curve because of what he'd done against me before," Lowrie was quoted in the postgame euphoria. "He left it up in the zone and it found a hole for me.
"I never really lost confidence," Lowrie added when asked about his struggles last month. "I was still grinding out at bats in September, but I didn't have a lot to show for it. Baseball is a funny game like that. You have to keep a steady approach."
Bay also thought he was fortunate on his hit in the ninth, but this is a guy who hit two huge homers in the first two games of the series. He was a menacing hitter in all four games.
"It's a blast to be here," said Bay, who was with the lifeless Pittsburgh Pirates for five years. "I didn't hit the (double) too hard. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. We still have a couple of more (series) to go through, but this is the stuff you dream about. I can't imagine playing anywhere else."
With the Angels starting to feel their oats after roughing up Beckett 24 hours earlier, it was Lester who did his best to put them on their way home night with his second consecutive masterpiece in the American League Division Series.
Going strictly by the numbers, Lester pitched the best game of his life when he threw a no-hitter against the Kansas City Royals in May, but last night may have been his finest hour.
Lester pitched seven innings of shutout ball, striking out four and walking two, and departed (after throwing 109 pitches) with a 2-0 lead.
The new ace deserved a win. His performance was overlooked because of the late game tension, the Angels comeback, a botched suicide squeeze by the Angels in the ninth that saw the potential go-ahead run tagged out between third and home and the clutch hitting of Bay and Lowrie. But Lester put his team in a position to win again. In two games against the Angels, he didn't allow an earned run in 14 innings.
Lester really was the main reason why the Angels, who were favored in the series after winning 100 games in the regular season, were cut down by the Sox.
"I want to congratulate the Red Sox. They beat us," said Angels manager Mike Scioscia. "The Red Sox got it going a little better, but that happens. Any game in this series could've gone either way. They stepped up and did the job. We didn't do it quite as often.
"The last three times we've played (the Red Sox) in the playoffs, they've beaten us. We played better than we did in 2004 or 2007, so this is very disappointing. We couldn't get enough done."
Lester got enough done, and he'll be asked to do it again and again against the Tampa Bay Rays. That's the job of an ace.
