The wild card appears all but certain to go to the Sox, A's, Rangers, Angels, White Sox, or Twins, unless the Devil Rays continue their surprising surge.
"This will be a good test for us," Kevin Millar said. "We just have to find a way to get on a little win streak and get some confidence going."
Wins and confidence have been hard to come by since the Sox began a 14-20 stretch May 27 that reached its nadir with a tumultuous 1-5 trip through New York and Atlanta. If the Sox fail to reverse course before they emerge from the shadow of Disneyland, look for general manager Theo Epstein to shake things up faster than the two-minute bobsled plunge down Disney's Matterhorn.
"Every [game] matters," said Curt Schilling. "We may be playing the teams that are in front of us for the wild card over the next 10 days, but we can't look two days ahead. Seriously, if we don't take care of the game in hand, it's not going to matter what series we're playing come August." The Sox led the American League East by 1 1/2 games when the A's embarrassed them, 15-2, May 27 at Fenway, triggering their slide. Other than the Yankees, the Sox had not played a team over .500 before they took two of three from the A's May 25-27. Since then, they have played all but eight of their 31 games against teams over .500 and have fared miserably.
"There's no alternative but to show up [tonight] and try a little harder and hustle a little more and work a little harder," manager Terry Francona said. "That's all we can do right now. We can talk about how frustrated we are, but we've got to play better, we've got to pitch better, we've got to manage better, we've got to coach better. We've got to do everything better."
Maybe returning home will help. The Sox are 25-14 at Fenway and have stumbled to an 18-23 mark on the road. They will lead with Tim Wakefield tonight against Barry Zito, with Wakefield coming off two respectable starts against the Twins and Yankees in which he allowed only one earned run over 14 innings.
