G160: Yankees 19, Red Sox 8

Yankees - 133 510 312 - 19  20  0
Red Sox - 300 110 003 -  8  13  1

Ouch. There were some bright spots in this one, though.

Jacoby Ellsbury and Kevin Youkilis both homered in the first inning. Ellsbury went 4-for-5 and stole his 50th base of the season -- only the third player in Red Sox history to do so.

Gil Velazquez and George Kottaras both got their first major league hit tonight. Velaquez hit an RBI single off the left field wall in the fourth and Kottaras smacked an opposite field double into the left field corner in the fifth.

And Chris Smith put a zero on the board in the top of the sixth, denying New York the chance at becoming the first team in American League history to score in all nine innings of a game.

***

Game back on at 11:05.

***

Another rain delay (tarp out at 10:26) in the top of the 5th, no outs for New York.

Tampa Bay lost (again!) to Detroit, 6-4, but if the Red Sox cannot come back in this one, the Rays will clinch the East tonight. Perhaps this debacle will be washed away.

***

After a rain delay of about 90 minutes, the game is on. David Pauley has replaced Dice as the Boston starter.

***

Alfredo Aceves (1.38, 311 ERA+) / Daisuke Matsuzaka (2.80, 163 ERA+)

While the Red Sox are preparing for both scenarios, the general feeling in the front office is that the Angels will choose the ALDS schedule that begins on Wednesday rather than Thursday, allowing both clubs to use only three starting pitchers. As the Globe notes:

Such a scenario defies the popular theory that the Angels would opt to start Thursday, thereby preventing the Sox from using Josh Beckett and Jon Lester twice. ...

The Angels have their reasons for starting Wednesday. Los Angeles would be able to go with a three-man rotation of John Lackey, Ervin Santana, and Joe Saunders, bypassing Jon Garland and Jered Weaver.

Terry Francona plans to use Mike Lowell at DH tonight and have him play third base on Sunday.

In the case of a playoff emergency, the Sox purchased the contract of Gil Velazquez, 28. And he made his major league debut last night, after 11 years and nearly 1,000 minor league games.

With three games remaining, Dustin Pedroia has 211 hits, good for 5th place on Boston's all-time single-season list. He needs two more to tie Jim Rice's 1978 total of 213. Tops on the list? Wade Boggs, with 240 in 1985 (which included a team-record 187 singles). Pedroia is the first Red Sox player to get 200 hits in a season in ten years (Mo Vaughn: 205, in 1998).

Jacoby Ellsbury has a career-high 16-game hitting streak (25-for-72, .347).

***

For the Yankees, Aceves, a 25-year-old RHP, has made two relief appearances and three starts (log) since joining the Yankees at the end of August: 26 IP, 20 H, 6 BB, 15 K. Was Watching: "I've seen his height listed as low as 5′ 10″ and as high as 6′ 1″ - and his weight is between 150 and 176 pounds ..." And BR and MLB list him at 6-3, 220!

Other news from New York is that Mariano Rivera left the team and went back to New York for a precautionary MRI. However, Joe Girardi lied to the media about this before the game and then stubbornly stuck to his bogus story even after various writers said they had gotten the truth from Brian Cashman. ... Peter Abraham (LoHud) has audio: "It has gotten to the point where team officials now apologize to reporters for the manager's actions. Nobody is sure why he does it because he gets caught every time."

And the New York Times mentions Hank Steinbrenner's "mission of contributing imbecility to every publication that will have him". Perfect!

***

Rays/Tigers at 7

East                     Magic #
Rays       96  63   ---
Red Sox    94  65   2.0     1