Boston @ Baltimore preview
Oriole Park at Camden Yards
Last Meeting ( Jul 4, 2010 ) Baltimore 6, Boston 1
With their playoff hopes slowly sinking, the Boston Red Sox will limp into Baltimore on Tuesday night to open a three-game series against the rejuvenated Orioles.
Having dropped two of three contests at Tampa Bay over the weekend, the Red Sox enter the last day of August lagging seven games behind the Rays and New York Yankees in the AL East.
With just 31 games remaining on the season and New York and Tampa Bay cruising along with the best records in baseball, the margin of error for the Red Sox on a 1 to 10 scale is about 0.5.
Boston normally would like its chances with Josh Beckett on the mound in Tuesday's series opener, but the Orioles are no longer the easy mark that they were just a couple of months back. Nor is Beckett the same pitcher the Red Sox are accustomed to trotting out in a big spot and feeling confident of a victory.
Beckett (4-3) does have history on his side, posting a 6-2 record with a 3.61 ERA in 13 career starts against Baltimore. But it's the 30-year-old right-hander's recent history that has proved to be more troubling for Boston.
Prior to winning his last start against the Seattle Mariners, in which he allowed three runs on four hits in 6 1/3 innings, Beckett was throttled in his three previous appearances.
His inability to keep the ball inside the park has been a major issue. Beckett has surrendered eight homers in his last five starts, including two against the Mariners after he had worked six overpowering innings and yielded just a single.
Baltimore’s Luke Scott is 8-for-18 with two homers against Beckett while teammate Ty Wigginton has gone 9-for-29 and taken him deep four times.
Opposing Beckett will be left-hander Brian Matusz, who, like the Orioles, has turned his season around in the past month.
Baltimore has gone 16-10 since Buck Showalter took the managerial reins on Aug. 3. The Orioles are coming off a three-game sweep of the Los Angeles Angels, allowing just one run in the series and recording back-to-back shutouts.
Matusz will look to extend that streak when he faces Boston for the fourth time this season, having gone 1-0 with a 2.41 ERA. He was superb against the Red Sox on July 4, limiting them to two hits in seven scoreless innings in a 6-1 victory at Boston.
That effort snapped a nine-game losing streak and a drought of 2 1/2 months without a victory for Matusz, who is 3-1 since Showalter took over and has won his last two starts in stellar fashion.
Matusz allowed one run in three hits in seven innings against the Chicago White Sox on Wednesday and shut out the Texas Rangers on five hits through eight innings in his previous outing.
In his last five starts, Matusz is giving what the Orioles expected when they made him the No. 4 overall pick in 2008, allowing one run or fewer on four occasions.