Dustin Pedroia had the go-ahead homerun in the seventh and Mike Lowell was 4-4 with two RBI’s to help Boston (69-45) avoid the sweep against the Los Angeles Angels (66-74) winning 9-6.
In a back and forth game Hideki Okajima earned his third win of the season and Eric Gagne pitched in with his third hold of the season.
Jonathan Papelbon earned his 26th save of the season as Jon Lester did not get past the fourth inning.
Lester only pitched for 3 1/3 innings, giving up eight hits, five runs, walked three, and struck out three in his fourth start of the season.
With the game tied at six in the seventh inning Pedroia launched his fifth homerun on the season off of Justin Speier to left field and Boston added two more in the eighth to preserve the win and move ahead of the New York Yankees in the division with a six game lead.
Pedroia’s homerun barely got out as left fielder Garrett Anderson just missed robbing the homerun, but it brushed off of his glove going over the fence for a Boston 7-6 lead.
Julio Lugo had a sacrifice fly in the eighth and Brandon Moss scored on a wild pitched from Scot Shields. Moss singled off of Shields earlier in the inning for his first Major League hit in his first game in his first Major League start as Boston’s right fielder in the game. Moss also played left field in the game for Boston as well.
Lester was not pitching effectively from the start having trouble finding the strike zone throughout. Lester threw 93 pitches in 3 1/3 innings and only 54 of them were for strikes. The whole Angels lineup had Lester’s fastball and curveball figured out as he had his earliest exit of the season thus far in four starts.
David Ortiz was given the day off due to his shoulder problem that occurred when sliding into second base against the Angels at Fenway Park earlier in the year. Ortiz had inflamation in the shoulder during last night’s batting practice, but played through it. Terry Francona elected to give Ortiz the day off today considering Boston has a scheduled off day on August 9th that will give Ortiz two days of much needed rest.
Pedroia was 3-5 on the night with the homerun, two singles, and scored three times. Lowell had three doubles, one walk, and one single including the two RBI’s.
The Angels had an early 3-0 lead, but did not hold onto it much like the Red Sox did not last night giving up four in the fifth.
Manny Ramirez doubled to deep center scoring Pedroia and Kevin Youkilis, J.D. Drew doubled to deep left center scoring Ramirez, and Lowell brought home the final run of the inning hitting a double to the same spot as Drew which scored him from second base exchanging the lead with the Angels 4-3.
The fifth inning was another big inning for Boston scoring two runs one of which was on a sacrifice fly by Youkilis and the other a Lowell RBI single that scored the second run of the inning.
