Red Sox 07 Game 25

Tuesday, May 1 Fenway Park 7:05 PM ET
OAK Joe Blanton, RHP (2-1, 3.55) Athletics (12-13) @ BOS Curt Schilling, RHP (3-1, 3.27) Red Sox (16-8)

Boston is ahead of Toronto by 3.5 games, Baltimore by 5, Tampa Bay by 5.5 and the Spankees by 6.5

Update: Press pass is here.
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The recap after the game will be here.

From MLB.Com Scouting Report:

Red Sox: Schilling, who has prevailed in three consecutive decisions, is coming off an impressive outing at Baltimore on Wednesday, when he gave up a run on five hits over seven innings. Lifetime against the A's, he's 3-3 with a 3.75 ERA in 11 games.

A's: Blanton fired a six-hitter against the Mariners in Oakland on Wednesday, but it wasn't enough, because Seattle's Jarrod Washburn threw a three-hit shutout in a 2-0 M's victory. It was the shortest nine-inning A's game -- one hour, 47 minutes -- since August 1979. Blanton walked two -- one intentionally -- while striking out six on 105 pitches, but he gave up solo homers to Jose Guillen and Kenji Johjima.

As usual all statistics were found at the day by day database at Baseball Musings and this year at BaseballReference.

Expected Batters vs opposing starter

Player	AB	Hits	2b	3b	HR's	RBI	BB's	K's	BA
J. Lugo	10	5	2	0	0	2	0	0	.500
K. Youkilis	3	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	.000
D. Ortiz	5	1	0	0	0	1	0	1	.200
M. Ramirez	4	3	0	0	0	0	2	1	.750
J.D. Drew	4	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	.250
M. Lowell	3	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	.000
J. Varitek	6	2	0	0	0	0	0	2	.333
C. Crisp	6	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	.167
D. Pedroia	---	---	---	---	---	---	---	---	---
Totals	41	13	3	0	0	3	2	4	.317

The expected batters have a decent history against Blanton, but this works out to 3 earned runs per outing against this pitcher. This is slightly above his 2.02 ERA vs Boston. Only Eric Hinske of the bench players has faced this pitcher and his numbers are not very good as he has only 1 hit (a double) in 12 at bats with 1 K.

Historical Pitching lines

Pitcher	GS	W	L	Sho	IP	H	ER	HR	BB	K	ERA
Blanton	2	2	0	0	13 1/3	11	3	1	4	7	2.02
Schilling	7	3	3	0	44 1/3	55	21	3	7	43	4.26

Curt allowed just 2 hits in 7 innings vs Oakland in Fenway last year. He has faced the A's 4 times in Fenway with a 2 - 1 record in 26 innings pitched. His lost was in Sept. 2005, this was one of his first starts that year and he went 6 2/3 innings giving up only 4 runs.

Curt is on a roll so far this year and I expect that to continue. Plus Oakland is beat up in the regular line up as they have five players on the DL. Including Rich Harden, Milton Bradley, Esteban Loaiza and Mark Kotsay. Now is a good time to play these guys.

Oakland is also struggling at the plate having scored 95 runs in 25 games. In their last 10 games the A's are 4 - 6 while the Sox are 7 - 3. Plus Oakland generally starts slow then finishes fast.