The surprising Boston Red Sox (33-22) head to the Bronx today to face the equally surprising New York Yankees (30-23) in a battle for American League East supremacy tonight at 7:05 p.m. The game will be broadcast on MLB Network, and can be live streamed for free here or seen on MLB.com with a subscription. Yankees fans can listen to the game at WCBS 880 while Red Sox fans can tune in to WEEI 93.7.
Tonight's opener of the three-game set features the best pitching matchup of the three games, pitting CC Sabathia (4-4, 3.96 ERA) of the Yanks against Jon Lester (6-1, 3.34 ERA) in one of the best bounce back seasons any Major League player is having.
One year removed from a 9-14 season in which he pitched to a 4.82 ERA, Lester has regained his form and pitched like an ace. His strikeouts per nine innings have remained the same while he's walking almost a full batter less per game. His home runs per nine innings has dropped to less than one, and he is surrendering two less hits per game.
Despite the pretty numbers Lester has shown some subtle signs of coming back to Earth, giving up 10 runs, nine earned in his last two starts. His counterpart, Sabathia, has also failed to pitch up to his own lofty standards lately.
For his career, Sabathia has generally had bad Aprils before settling in for long stretches of high-level productivity until July, where he's dipped a bit before turning on the jets and completely dominating late in the season.
This year, Sabathia was wonderful in April, and has hit a wall. In five May starts CC is 0-2 with a 4.85 ERA and 1.48 WHIP. They will need their ace to be a stopper tonight; the Yankees have dropped five consecutive games, including four straight to the crosstown rival Mets. They are 2.5 games behind the Red Sox in the AL East standings and if their slide continues, they could find themselves in a 5.5-game hole by Monday.
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