80

Jon Garland returned to his 2005 form last night, throwing 7.1 innings of one-run, six-hit, no-walk baseball for his eighth win of the season in a 4-2 Sox victory over the Orioles. The O's made it interesting in the late innings though. In the eighth, they had runners on second and third with no outs before Garland got Luis Matos to ground out, Matt Thornton induced Brian Roberts to do the same, and Bobby Jenks finished off the Birds by striking out pinch-hitter Javy Lopez on four pitches -- the first three registering 98 mph and the last one reaching 100 mph. Jenks got himself in trouble in the ninth (maybe because he's not used to coming into the game before then) by allowing a run on three straight hits. But Bad Bobby garnered his league-leading 26th save by striking out the next three batters, using an assortment of breaking balls. Nice to have a wicked curve and slider to go along with his kind of heat. Offensively, the Sox scored early and often, sending 10 men to the plate and tallying four runs (the minimum number of runs you can score with 10 batters in an inning). It's a good thing too, since Baltimore shut out the Good Guys the rest of the way.

With the win, the Sox kept pace with the Tigers, who finally defeated Oakland behind Kenny Rogers who has a 24-4 lifetime record in the A's home stadium -- the third-best career winning percentage at one park in major league history (for a minimum number of games that I forget right now). Detroit's lead remains 1.5 games; the Sox Magic Number shrinks to 80. There's one more game with the Orioles before the Bosox come to town to finish up the pre-All-Star Game part of the season. Let's hope for a better finish than last year when the A's swept a three-game set against the Sox just before the break. Go Sox!