SOX WIN; TEIXEIRA TO BOSTON?

The Red Sox beat Cleveland last night 1-0 behind the just-good-enough pitching of Daisuke Matsuzaka. Matsuzaka pitched well, but it seemed like he was just a half step ahead of getting creamed. Maybe it was just me...

The Indians did hit a bunch of balls hard that happened to go directly to the Sox fielders. When they didn't hit them at fielders, the fielders made excellent plays on the ball (I'm thinking of you, Pedroia). Sometimes the fates are with you. The old saying about how its better to be lucky than good applies here. A few weeks ago, those balls were dropping on the Sox. Its nice to see them drop into Red Sox gloves instead.

C.C. Sabathia was every bit as good as Matsuzaka. The Sox offense was only able to muster one run in his seven innings, and that only by a fraction of an inch. With two outs and runners on first and third in the fourth inning, Mike Lowell hit a fly ball to short left field. The Indian's left fielder came in on the ball and dove to make the catch, but juuuuust missed it. He ended up trapping it against the grass. This allowed Kevin Youkilis to score with what turned out to be the game's only run.

After Matsuzaka's seven innings, Okajima and Papelbon contributed scoreless 8th and 9th innings, respectively. Ho hum.

Great job the the Sox to steal a game in Cleveland against a very good Indians team. If the Sox manage to win one of the remaining two games of the series, you'd have to classify it as incredibly successful. The Sox seem to have the edge in starting pitching for both of the last two games, so hopefully they can get at least one of them.

In other Sox news, Jim Molony of MLB.com thinks that the Red Sox are close to landing Mark Teixeira from the Texas Rangers. He mentions "young pitchers" as what the Sox might be willing to give up, though you'd have to think that Mike Lowell would also be on his way out somewhere if Teixeira is coming in. It would be hard to imagine that the Sox would keep Teixeira, Youkilis, and Lowell on the same team, and more difficult to imagine that they'd trade Youkilis.

While Teixeira would be an upgrade offensively, with the club on a five game winning streak and seven up on New York, I find it hard to believe that Theo would risk disrupting the team to make a trade like this. File this away under 'intriguing but probably not.'

AL East: The Yankees, Toronto, and Baltimore all won. Tampa didn't. The Red Sox lead New York by 7.5 games, Toronto by 11.0 games, Baltimore by 15.0 games, and Tampa by an astounding 22.5 games.

Tomorrow (Wednesday): Josh Beckett faces Fausto Carmona at 7:05pm EST. Carmona has been very effective this season, but his stats don't stack up to his results, meaning he's been a bit lucky so far. It will be interesting to see how he does against the Red Sox. Hopefully Big Papi will be healthy enough to do some crushing of something other than his own shoulder.