Fan Fanatic Sports Staff
Jon Lester pitched extremely well again as the Sox eke out a 1-0 win against the KC Royals. He may have looked shaky in the first with two walks, but ended up pitching 8 innings, allowing 0 runs on 4 hits. The two first inning walks were the only two of the game while he struck out 8 to lower his ERA to 3.87. This game was a very entertaining one to watch. Brian Banister pitched just as well allowing 1 run on 3 hits over 7.2 innings pitched. Like the title of the article alluded to, it was a very nice pitchers duel. What made it a National League style game was how the Red Sox won it. Nick Green finally got done a two strike bunt to move Mark Kotsay into scoring position at 2nd base. Eventually Dustin Pedroia drove the ball off the wall to bring in the eventual winning run.
The most important thing in the game was the dominance of Jonathon Papelbon in the 9th. He's been a heart attack closer all season, so it's was very rare to see a clean 1, 2, 3 ninth inning last night. He's now converted 23 saves in 25 opportunities. Of those 25 save opportunities, he's only converted 7 of them cleanly. He's also already set a career high for walks, 18, in a season and we're just at the halfway point.
Now let's get to the Jorge Bannister, no relation to Brian by the way, of this article. I loved his Manny Ramirez ejection article, and it is very relevant to last nights' game. The Red Sox should have had the 1st run of the game in the 5th inning. Jacoby Ellsbury was absolutely robbed when he was called out at home during a superbly executed run down between Ellsbury and Mark Kotsay. Like Ramirez, we have no idea what he said, but was pretty much thrown out of the game for slamming his helmet on the ground. Are you kidding me! If I got thrown out of every game I did that, then I'd have a 50% ejection rate. The worst part of it all, is that Derryl Cousins was in perfect position to make the call. As I know from personal experience, Terry Francona was not ejected himself because Cousins knew he blew the call. To steal a line from Tommy Heinson, "This guy was ridiculous". Luckily for the Sox, they did come up with the 8th inning run to take the game. I guess what goes around comes around.
