One down, 13 to go. Boston topped Tampa 8-2 thanks to eight solid innings from Lowe and three hits (including a long home run) from Ramirez. The Red Sox scored in 6 of their 8 innings and, because the Mariners lost 6-4 in Texas, bumped their wild card lead to 1½ games. Lowe began with 4.2 no-hit innings and of his 24 outs, only one was hit to the outfield. In his past seven starts dating to Aug. 13 in Oakland, he is 5-0 with a 2.58 ERA:

          IP    H  ER  BB  K

0813 Oak   5    5   2   2  3   7-3  W

0819 Oak   6    2   0   0  3   2-3 ND

0824 Sea   7.1  5   1   5  4   6-1  W

0829 NYY   6    5   5   3  1  10-5  W

0903 CWS   7   10   2   4  3   5-4 ND

0909 Bal   6    6   1   2  5   9-2  W

0915 TB    8    4   2   2  6   8-2  W

          45.1 37  13  18 25

Blogwatch: Jeffery the Embedded Yankee checks in at Musings; the AL contenders' bullpens at Dewey’s House; Yanks Fan/Sox fan look at their pre-season predictions; Guapo's Ghost is preparing an analysis of Lowe; and an early look at part of the 2004 schedule.

Elsewhere, Three more reviews of HBO's Curse of the Bambino, which debuts tonight; Chris Dial looks at the AL races; Larry Mahnken writes: "What Alfonso Soriano represents to me is the crux of the differences between traditional analysis and sabermetric analysis"; King Kaufman on baseball v football blogs (and a follow-up); Parts 1 and 2 of an interview with Ned Colletti, Assistant General Manager of the San Francisco Giants. … Rob Neyer's AL MVP list: Alex Rodriguez, Jorge Posada, Bret Boone, Carlos Delgado and Jason Giambi.

Pedro/Jeremi Gonzalez at 7:05 pm.