In a tradition usually reserved for St. Patrick’s Day, the Boston Red Sox will bust out their green uniforms and hats again for the April 12th game against the Seattle Mariners. The reason. They will be honoring and paying tribute to the late great Red Auerbach who passed away in October of 2006 and the Celtics organization.

The Red Sox also have other activities planned for the tribute that will be announced in the near future.

Jon Lester is making significant strides so far in spring training. Lester took the hill for the Sox on Friday in the first minor league game of spring training. He fared very well by throwing only 20 pitches to the 6 batters he faced in two innings of work. 15 of those 20 pitches were strikes.

So what does this mean for Lester? It means that he will now sit down again with Terry Francona and John Farrell to map out a course of action. They had been working on a two week schedule with Lester, each time setting a goal of where they wanted to Lester to be. So far so good, as he has passed all the tests in his return from his battle from cancer.

“It felt good to get more of a game setting with umpires than a controlled setting like last time,” said Lester, who completed chemotherapy for anaplastic large cell lymphoma in December and has since been given a clean bill of health. “It felt good, and hopefully, I can build from it and go one more or two more innings next time.”

“You can always look at a radar gun for speed, but it’s good to get feedback from them when you don’t feel 100 percent on your fastball, and they’re late on it,” Lester said. “So you know you have pretty good carry on it, and you know you’re doing the right things to get it there. All in all, it was pretty good.”

This is just more great news for Lester and the Red Sox. A healthy Lester will make the Red Sox rotation even more deeper and stronger even if he is pitching in Pawtucket to start the season. I hope that he is ready for the big leagues again by the end of spring training and makes the Red Sox think about keeping him up there. Of course, it’s a selfish thought because I want him in the rotation and Jonathan Papelbon to move back to closing games. A boy can dream can’t he.

Under strict orders not to swing when at the plate, even informing the umpire and Dodgers catcher, Russell Martin, that he wasn’t swinging, Daisuke Matsuzaka managed to draw a walk in his only plate appearance. Unfortunately for Matsuzaka, this was the only chance he did get to bat in the game as mother nature didn’t cooperate and the game was rained out after two innings.

Up to the point of the rain delay and subsequent rainout, Dice-K had only thrown 34 pitches, 20 which were strikes. Again, he got into a little trouble as he gave up a lead-off double, a sacrifice bunt, and a bloop single which allowed the run the score.

After the game was called, Dice-K managed to get some more work in the cages, throwing another 77 pitches in a simulated 5 innings. This got his throwing up to about 100 pitches which is normal at this point in spring training for most pitchers.

Well at this point of spring training, there is a lot of work still to do for him. He still is learning the American strike zone and this will take time to adjust for him. He has been working on his pitches a lot, and I only expect he will get better as spring training draws to a close in the next few weeks. As far as him batting, we won’t have to worry about that until interleague play starts up in June. Interleague play actually starts up in May, but the Red Sox are home to face the Atlanta Braves so if he is scheduled to pitch, he won’t have to bat since it’s in an American League park.