Three steps ahead...

Well, I am appaently ahead of Teddy in coming out with a look forward/look back for this week. Maybe a Yankee fan feels like a Holiday weekend is an excuse to shirk his pseudo-journalistic duties, whereas I, with the feverish devotion of a fan who once thought that Wayne Gomes would solve the Red Sox bullpens woes, muster up the initiative to go to work.

In terms of a look back, there isn't much I can say that I haven't already said during the week while following the Red Sox-Yankees series. The Yankees won 2 out of 3 games, but the Red Sox are still sitting at 34-15 to the Yankees' 21-27.

The Rangers' series was also a pleasant surprise - I had pessimistically predicted a Rangers sweep, and while the Red Sox arms weren't quite up to it (Matsuzaka blowing chunks in the dugout, Wake's knuckler not knuckling, Tavarez settling down to earth), the offense picked them up when they needed it.

Of course, this isn't terribly difficult in A) the Ballpark at Arlington or B) against the Rangers' pitching staff, but it was encouraging to see.

As I type this out, the Sox have begun play against the team with the 2nd-best record in the American League - the Cleveland Indians.

I imagine that Christopher Trotman Nixon received a warm welcome home from the Fenway faithful, and with a righty on the mound tonight (Schilling), Nixon is in the game. The thumbnail photo of him on Yahoo! Sports is a bit disconcerting, as you can see long hair peeking out from underneath his ballcap (no word on if this is the only one he'll wear this season) after years of seeing him rocking the clean-shaven Charley Xavier look.

The score is currently 2-0 in favor of Boston, but I won't count my poultry products while they're still in embryonic form.

It looks like Beckett will be back tomorrow - I'm cautiously optomistic about his finger problems, and I don't think that the Sox would rush him back if he wasn't ready yet. He's pitching against Jeremy Sowers, who just turned 24, and owns a 1-4 record with 16 BBs and 13 Ks and a 6.29 ERA over 48 and 2/3 innings in 9 starts. Before holding the Royals to 1 run over 7 innings in his last appearance, he was 0-4 with a 7.13 ERA.

I certainly don't want to dismiss the guy (because I am congenitally superstitious), but this matchup does look favorable in favor of the Sox.

The last game of the series features Dice-K against Paul Byrd. I still can't say that I've figured Dice-K out. Is a superhuman ace (i.e. the Japanese Pedro)? Certainly not this year, maybe not ever, but he's certainly proven himself reliable, occasionally unittable, and not a guy who will lose the game all by himself.

Paul Byrd, with his 5-1 record, seems to have struck the sort of Faustian bargain that allowed another Paul (Paul Abbott) to inexplicably go 17-4 for the 2001 Mariners.

Of course, Abbott benefitted from a potent offense, as his numbers 118 Ks, 87 BBs, 4.25 ERA, certainly prove that he wasn't doing it all himself. Byrd's ERA (3.81) and total strikeouts (30) are respectable enough. His most impressive stat is 3 - which is the number of walks he is issued this year. Given how patient the Sox are, it will be interesting to see how that number changes or does not for Byrd.

After the Red Sox finish the series with the Indians....

OK, this is ridiculous. I started that sentence not knowing the answer and went to look it up making a little internal joke to myself to the effect of "they play the Yankees again!"

Well, guess what, cats and kittens - after a day off on Thursday, the Red Sox and the Yankees play three more in the Bronx.

OK, I know that the point of this blog is the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry, but come on - how many of these series' previews can we write in such a short period of time?

If the Sox rotation is allowed to run it's usual course, that would put Wake on the hill Friday, Tavarez Saturday, and Schilling Sunday. Because of the off-day and the fact that it's the Yankees, I imagine they'll skip Tavarez, and we'll see Wake-Schill-Beckett. They might also use the off-day to go down to Arizona, see how the whole "cloning Ted Williams" thing is working out, and possibly have the clone ready on the bench as a pinch-hitter by Friday night.

There's also the possibility that Clemens will be ready by this weekend, but I don't really want to get into those matchups now - I'll try and take a more subjective look at the series on Thursday night.

In the meantime, I'll focus on something else in lieu of a regular game-by-game matchup.

Who would win in a fight - the Red Sox bench of the Yankees' bench?

I thought the Yankees' would have the automatic advantage in numbers here, but since both teams are carrying 12 pitchers, they both have 4-man benches.

In the Red corner: Doug Mirabelli, Eric Hinske, Alex Cora, Wily Mo Pena

In the Pin-striped corner: Wil Nieves, Josh Phelps, Miguel Cairo, Melky Cabrera.

Because Teddy knows the Yankees' bench better than I do (really, other than the fact that Miguel Cario sounds like a Peter Lorre villian in an old Warners' noir, I don't have much to say about them), I'll leave it up to him to offer the counterpoint. I will simply make the guys for the Boston guys.

Doug Mirabelli: Would elude the blows of his opponents well, due to his knuckleball-honed reflexes, but his counterpunches would only be average.

Eric Hinske: Adept at several fighting styles, but only average at each. The occasional Rockyesque fighting performance will be undermined by all the times that he ends up on the canvas.

Alex Cora: Like Hinske, adept at many fighting styles, but well above-average. He would be underestimated in a fight, and then overwhelm opponents with a combination of finess and raw power.

Wily Mo Pena: Like Brad Pitt in "Snatch", a one-punch knockout guy. The damage he inflicts in one punch makes up for all the times that he fails to land a punch at all.

There, that was thereapuetic - I'll leave it to Teddy to rebut.