Before we get into today’s Boston Red Sox delight, here is yet another musical montage from the fine musical montage makers at NESN.

This afternoon, Jon Lester and the Boston Red Sox look to continue the momentum from last night’s 8-4 win as they try to get their second straight win against the Toronto Blue Jays. The Jays have given the Red Sox fits all season as they hold a 6-3 advantage in the season series.

The Red Sox come into the game still sitting 4.5 games behind the Tampa Bay Rays, who despite all their injuries, don’t appear to be falling off as many expected. The Red Sox have a half game lead over the White Sox for the race in the wild card.

Lester comes into today’s game with a 12-4 record with a 3.17 ERA. He has been the Red Sox best pitcher all season long and it’s shown. His 12 wins this season is one better than the 11 he had won before this season. He has faced the Blue Jays twice in his career and has no record with 0.61 ERA. He threw 8 innings of 1-hit ball in the Red Sox 1-0 win over the Jays back on April 29th.

Former Rays batboy Jesse Litsch gets the nod from Cito Gaston today for the Blue Jays. He has faced the Red Sox 4 times in his career and is 3-1 with a 4.57 ERA.

Nick Cafardo has some news and notes about Josh Beckett’s next start being pushed back to Friday now and that Tim Wakefield will be activated on Tuesday to start against the New York Yankees.

I forgot to include a few links in the morning post so I will be including them here.

Rob Bradford was down in Philadelphia for last night’s LA Dodgers game to see Manny. The only word Manny had for the assembled Boston media was “Hi”. Bradford also has some comments from Joe Torre about Manny as well.

Jed Lowrie talks about how he became a switch-hitter.

Lineups and batter/pitcher matchups after the jump.

74-54

1. Jacoby Ellsbury, RF
2. Dustin Pedroia, 2B
3. David Ortiz, DH
4. Kevin Youkilis, 1B
5. Jason Bay, LF
6. Jed Lowrie, 3B
7. Jason Varitek, C
8. Alex Cora, SS
9. Coco Crisp, CF

- Jon Lester, SP

66-62

1. Marco Scutaro, 2B
2. Jose Bautista, 3B
3. Alex Rios, RF
4. Vernon Wells, CF
5. Adam Lind, LF
6. Rod Barajas, C
7. Lyle Overbay, 1B
8. Kevin Mench, DH
9. John McDonald, SS

- Jesse Litsch, SP

Here is how the hitters have fared against today’s starting pitchers. Stats are courtesy of Baseball Reference.