Red Sox 07 Game 146 Preview

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A. Sonnanstine		5-9, 5.73		T. Wakefield		16-10, 4.39
Devil Rays		61 - 83		Red Sox		87 - 58

Monday, September, 11      Fenway Park  ✠ 7:05 PM ET

American League

East	W	L	GB	L 10	1 R W	1 R L	X W	X L
Boston	87	58	-	7-3	21	22	91	54
New York	81	62	5.0	7-3	13	17	85	58
Toronto	72	71	14.0	5-5	25	24	76	67
Baltimore	61	81	24.5	3-7	11	28	64	78
Tampa	61	83	25.5	7-3	20	15	60	84

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Devil Rays: Sonnanstine picked up his fifth win of the season on Wednesday night when he held the Orioles to two runs on nine hits while striking out six in six innings. The right-hander could easily have continued since he had thrown only 83 pitches when he was lifted, but the Rays were winning by a large margin. Sonnanstine relied mostly on a cut fastball that he kept down in the zone, which set up all of his other pitches nicely. Sonnanstine has now won four of his last five starts. He is 1-1 with a 7.71 ERA in two career starts against the Red Sox.

Red Sox: Wakefield had his streak of 26 straight starts with a no-decision snapped in his last outing. The Red Sox did come back to win the game over the Orioles by a score of 7-6. In Wakefield's first turn in the rotation since missing an outing with back woes, he gave up nine hits and six runs over 3 2/3 innings. If ever there is a team Wakefield would seem primed to rebound against, it's the Devil Rays. Wakefield has owned Tampa Bay in his career, going 19-2 with a 2.72 ERA.

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

Hitting History vs Sonnanstine

Player	AB	H	2b	3b	HR's	RBI	BB's	K's	BA
J. Ellsbury	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
D. Pedroia	6	0	0	0	0	0	1	1	.000
D. Ortiz	6	2	0	1	0	1	0	1	.333
M. Lowell	5	2	1	0	0	0	0	0	.400
J.D. Drew	6	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	.167
K. Youkilis	6	1	0	0	0	0	0	2	.167
C. Crisp	4	1	1	0	0	2	1	1	.250
J. Lugo	4	1	1	0	0	2	0	0	.250
D. Mirabelli	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Totals	36	8	4	1	0	5	2	5	.222

Since the Sox have only faced Andy twice this year, there is not a lot of history here. Still what is here is a-ok. The only way you could improve this would be to let Varitek and his 3/5 start tonight. Of course, we could see Cash tonight for Mirabelli, but replacing zeros with zeros will not help this teams average against Sonnanstine. Still I like the teams chances here as the line-up will be as left handed as possible (only Hinske and Cora left on the bench). Sonnanstine's splits show lefties batting .304 with a .483 slugging percentage. Righties are at .260 with .446.

Historical Pitching Lines

Pitcher	GS	W	L	Sho	IP	H	ER	HR	BB	K	ERA	WHIP	IP/GS
Sonnanstine	2	1	1	0	11 2/3	12	10	1	2	8	7.71	1.20	5.83
Wakefield	26	17	2	0	168 1/3	132	53	16	55	107	2.83	1.11	6.47
(T.W. at Fen)	13	9	2	0	85 1/3	72	32	9	22	48	3.38	1.10	6.56

Tim owns the Devil rays. While his numbers at Fenway are worse than overall still he does quite well there. The question is how will the bats do against the rookie. The last time Sonnanstine pitched at Fenway he got the win. Still I like our chances against the kid.

♊ - When all else fails, get a bigger hammer!