Home Run Derby

After winning their respective divisions, it’s only fitting that the teams that tied for the most wins in the 2007 regular season would face off for the right to play in the World Series.

The Indians cruised to the AL Central title at 96-66 while the same record provided the Red Sox with a less comfortable victory over the 94-68 Yankees. These teams continued their strong 2007 campaigns by going a combined 6-1 in the first round of the playoffs and will now fight it out in a series that could be more competitive than the World Series.

This series features some of the top winners of 2007. The Red Sox and Indians each have three pitchers with 15+ wins, including two Indians tied for the second most wins with 19 and the Red Sox with the Majors’ only 20-game winner. Two of these Majors-leading pitchers will square off for a historic game one matchup.

In game one, 20-game winner Josh Beckett will face 19-game winner C.C. Sabathia, making it the first time a Major League wins leader has faced the category’s runner-up in the postseason. Beckett starts the series having improved his career postseason record to 3-2 with three shutouts in seven starts. He went 1-1 against the Indians this season with a 1.80 ERA, .143 BAA, 14 K and just one walk in 15 IP.

For the Indians, Sabathia won his second career postseason start in the ALDS to improve his career postseason record to 2-0. In his only start against the Sox this season, Sabathia lost despite allowing just one earned run on five hits and logging seven strikeouts in seven innings.

Game 2 pits Curt Schilling’s 9-8 record against 19-8 Fausto Carmona. Schilling is another established postseason pitcher who hasn’t lost to the Indians since 2004 while Carmona is a young fireballer with an interesting history against the Red Sox. In his only start against the Indians this year, Schilling earned the win in a seven inning performance in which he allowed just one earned run on six hits while tallying ten strikeouts. He also has a postseason record of 9-2 with four complete games and an ERA of 1.93.

Carmona’s only postseason start came in Game 2 of the Division Series against the Yankees. Despite allowing just one earned run in nine innings of 3-hit ball, Carmona was forced to settle for a no-decision in the Indians’ 10-inning 2-1 victory. In a similarly dominant performance earlier this season, Carmona beat the Sox while throwing eight innings of shutout baseball, allowing just four hits. That outing is a pleasant contrast from Carmona’s previous two appearances against the Red Sox.

In 2006, he entered a series at Fenway as the Indians’ closer. He was given the ball with a lead in the ninth inning on consecutive nights only to blow the lead and get slapped with the loss in both cases. He faced eight batters, recording just three outs while allowing three hits, two walks, and allowing all five baserunners to score. All of Boston is hoping that 2006 Fausto Carmona will show up at Fenway, but all signs point to Carmona continuing his 2007 dominance.

Game 3 features two postseason first-timers who ran into some trouble in their first appearances. Red Sox starter Daisuke Matsuzaka stayed true to form by having one bad inning in his ALDS start. He went 4.2 innings and allowed three earned runs, but all three came in the second. He had similar problems in his first outing against the Indians, throwing four shutout innings to start the game but then yielding two in the fifth and four in the sixth before being taken out of the game and receiving the loss. The next time, however, Matsuzaka threw seven shutout innings to earn the 1-0 win. In other words, you never know how Dice is gonna roll (I hate myself for saying that, but I have to leave it in).

Jake Westbrook will take the mound for the Indians in game three, and he should be happy that he will be pitching at the Jake rather than Fenway. In two career starts in Boston, Westbrook has an 8.44 ERA with a .477 BAA in 10.2 IP. At Jacobs Field, the park where he has thrown all three of his career shutouts, he has a much more stable 4.01 ERA. The location shouldn’t mean much to the Red Sox though, because in his home start against the Sox this year Westbrook allowed five earned runs on ten hits and four walks in six innings a losing effort.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 12th, 2007 at 5:10 pm and is filed under 2007 MLB Playoffs, Indians, Red Sox. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.