Boston 7, Los Angeles-Anaheim-California-Los Angeles Angels 4

It's amazing what can change in a week. Last Saturday morning, the Red Sox were coming off their 4th consecutive loss. The Yankees had won 16 of 18 to move 1 1/2 in front of Boston, while the Red Sox had fallen to 5 behind Baltimore. In the last 7 days, the Yankees are 0-6, the Orioles are 2-5, and the Red Sox are 5-2 to move within 2 games of first.

• I noted the other day that the Red Sox had yet to come back from a deficit of 3 runs (or more) to win a game. Well, they've done it now. They erased a 4-1 lead with 3 in the 7th, and put themselves in position to win with 3 more in the 8th, on Johnny Damon's bases-loaded, bases-clearing double to center.



• I don't know how it looked from the stands, but I was certain that Damon's double was just a long out. Finley looked like he had it, then all of a sudden he turned towards the wall, and the ball was over his head. Huge hit.



• David Wells had another decent outing. 7 innings, 4 ER is certainly not great, but a team with this team's offense should win a lot of games with that kind of starting pitching. One of the things that seems to happen with Wells is big innings. In the 56 innings that he's started so far, he's allowed no runs in 42 of them. But he's allowed 4 runs in an inning twice and 3 runs 5 times.



• His overall line for the season doesn't look that great. He's 3-4 with a 5.85 ERA. But that's slightly misleading, in that he hurt himself and continued pitching in a game against Baltimore, his last game before going on the DL, and then came off it when he apparently wasn't quite ready. If you look at the line without those two "extraordinary circumstances" games, it looks significantly different.
  
  
  
  

  David Wells

  	IP	H	ER	BB	K	ERA	WHIP	W	L
  Healthy	47.33	50	21	3	24	3.99	1.12	3	2
  Injured	5	17	13	1	4	23.4	3.6	0	2
  Total	52.33	67	34	4	28	5.85	1.36	3	4

  
  
  Obviously, those games count. But for most of his starts, Wells has been fine, worth exactly what they're paying him.



• Meaningless, irrelevant statistic of the day: After losing their first 3 games in which they allowed 4 runs 4-3, they've allowed 4 runs and won in both of the last 2 games.



• With their win over the Angels last night, the Red Sox are now halfway through their stretch of 10 consecutive games against 1st place teams (4 against Baltimore, 3 against the Angels, 3 against the Cardinals). They're 3-2 in the first 5.