Boston Red Sox

With the Boston Red Sox outfield decimated by injury, General Manager Theo Epstein and Manager Terry Francona looked to the Sox farm system for some short-term help this weekend.

Ready when opportunity knocked, OF Daniel Nava has hit .294 with an .856 OPS for the 2010 Pawtucket Red Sox, and on Saturday those numbers earned him a call to The Show.

After J.D. Drew hooked a homer off Joe Blanton around the Pesky Pole to lead off the bottom of the second inning, the scalding-hot Adrian Beltre followed it up with a base hit to right.

All the talk before the season started was that the Red Sox pitching would have to be fantastic in order for the Red Sox to win a title. The talk at the end of May was that the Red Sox needed to trade David Ortiz. Both of these have been disproven since, as the Red Sox enter the middle of June with one of the best offenses in the league.

Here are the numbers.

The Red Sox have made some interesting and perhaps somewhat predictable draft selections so far in the fledgling 2010 MLB First-Year Player Draft.

The Red Sox were in a huge rut as they started the 2010 year 4-9.

The highly touted pitching staff, which was expected to carry this team, struggled mightly. And the offense didn't do much at the plate.

There was talk of trading David Ortiz, or just giving up on the year at end of April.

But since the sluggish start, the Sox are the hottest team in baseball. Four players in particular have heavily impacted Boston's recent successs.

These four contributors deserve all-star votes.

After an uncharacteristically bad start to the season, the Boston Red Sox are back, making moves, and fighting to get to the top of the AL East.

Despite being a few games under .500 in April and early May, the offense is steamrolling through opponents’ pitching, and the Red Sox starting rotation is starting to become consistent, and reliable once again.

The chant was clear even on television, so it must have been deafening if you were one of the lucky 37,000 or so in the stands. During the middle innings of Saturday’s showdown with the Kansas City Royals at Fenway Park, the now familiar wave of “Yankees Suck! Yankees Suck!” cascaded down from the bleachers.

And it was downright depressing.

Caption: In a scene that has become all-too-familiar during Red Sox games, a Red Sox starter hands the baseball to manager Terry Francona after getting bombed. Last night, it was Tim Wakefield’s turn to get pulled mid-inning, after surrendering a grand slam to shortstop Yunieski Betancourt that gave Kansas City a 9-5 lead. The Red Sox lost, 12-5.

Roger Clemens has started some of the most crucial games in baseball history. His team has lost most of them.

Clemens has been called the greatest pitcher of his time, but when scrutinizing his record, one must question that conclusion.

In 1986, his third major league season, Clemens was 24-4, winning his first 14 decisions. He won the American League Cy Young Award. He was voted the league's MVP.

Outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury is back on the disabled list due to the rib cage injury suffered in Kansas City during the first week of the season.

He missed the next five weeks and returned to the lineup just last Saturday, but during the week, he suffered a relapse of the symptoms that took him out of action after colliding with 3B Adrian Beltre.

After being put back on the disabled list earlier today, Ellsbury implied that the Red Sox medical staff gave him bad information last week when they told him playing would not aggravate his condition.