Red Sox News & Notes – 9/16

Tampa Bay Rays' Evan Longoria, right, is congratulated by teammates B.J. Upton, center, and Desmond Jennings after his three-run home run against the Boston Red Sox in the third inning of a baseball game at Fenway Park in Boston, Thursday, Sept. 15, 2011.

Another game against the Tampa Bay Rays and yet another loss for the Boston Red Sox. This time it was Jeremy Hellickson who had the honors of shutting down the vaunted Red Sox offense in their 9-2 win.

With the win, the Rays cut the Red Sox lead to three games in the AL Wild Card. The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim are also lurking at four games behind in the wild card standings. The New York Yankees were off on Thursday night so the Red Sox trail them by 4.5 games for first place in the AL East.

Obviously the concern isn’t winning the division. It’s holding on for the wild card. And with three more games left against the Rays and their starting pitching, it’s looking more and more bleak.

It’s hard to keep up your spirits right now when it comes to the Red Sox. For as good of team as we’ve seen this season, outside of the first month and the last few weeks, you want more out of them. We know what they expect of themselves hence as fans of the team why our hopes are high.

The injuries are most definitely taking a major toll on this team.

In any other circumstances, Kevin Youkilis wouldn’t be playing with his hip issues and sports hernia. Normally if you take his bat out of the lineup, it’s not a good situation. Well he hasn’t been hitting since returning and you can everything is bothering him at the plate. But with Jed Lowrie battling shoulder troubles and Mike Aviles not being the same type of hitter as Youk, what else can Terry Francona due.

You have to wonder how this game would have turned out had Kyle Weiland not broken B.J. Upton‘s bat in the 3rd inning.

Weiland started the game off by retiring the first seven batters he faced for John Jaso started the hitting for the Rays with a double. After getting Reid Brignac to pop out, Weiland walked Desmond Jennings. He then broke Upton’s bat but the bat and the ball got to Marco Scutaro simultaneously and both went through his leg allowing Jaso to score.

Then he left a fastball over the plate to Evan Longoria and just like that it was 4-0. It was a deficit the Red Sox wouldn’t recover from even as they forced Hellickson out of the game in the 6th after working his pitch count up to 117.

The Red Sox have Josh Beckett on the hill later today and we aren’t sure what were going to get since this is his first start since injuring his ankle. We can only hope the ankle doesn’t bother him because right now, it seems like the Red Sox are hanging on by a thread and a prayer.

Simply put, we need Beckett to be Beckett and for the offense to be the offense. Otherwise, there’ll be more panic tonight in the streets of Boston then there was last night.

We’ll be back later with this evening’s lineups, batter/pitcher matchups and links from the day. But for now, enjoy the overnight links below by clicking on the read more button below if you’re on the home page.

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Tight Spot [Boston Globe]

Quit Thinking They’ll Go Away [Boston Globe]

Bad old memories closing in [Boston Globe]

Notebook: Good work for Buchholz [Boston Globe]

September swoon song [Boston Herald]

Calling for Cather care [Boston Herald]

Red Sox comparisons to ’78 not funny [Boston Herald]

Departed Manny Ramirez may have helped Rays [Boston Herald]

Josh Beckett’s on the spot [Boston Herald]

Sox fall flat again, fall to Rays, 9-2 [CSN New England]

After another loss, Sox look to Beckett Friday [CSN New England]