They wouldn't do that, but they would score two runs (one each) against Hideki Okajima and Papelbon, the pair whose mastery of the Yankees this season was erased in a 6-5 win for the New Yorkers last night that kept them above the Devil Rays in the American League East cellar.
"I had him 0-2, exactly what I wanted to do, obviously," Papelbon said. "In that situation I've got to throw him something that is outside the zone -- and I didn't do that.
"I threw the ball where I wanted to. I've just got to think next time I've got to get that ball out of the zone and get him to chase something I want to throw."
Seemingly invincible -- and certainly against the Yankees -- Okajima had been tabbed his team's MVP during an early-season series between the two teams. That still could be, though Kevin Youkilis, Mike Lowell, and Josh Beckett certainly could argue, but Okajima has ceased to be unhittable. He has had to settle for merely good, getting his first win of the season Saturday afternoon but following that with his first blown save last night, the precursor to Papelbon's first loss of the season.
"I know it was a good pitch," Francona said of the Papelbon fastball. "We've seen him do that before with that pitch, ahead in the count like that. I would say, to almost every hitter in the league it's a great pitch, [A-Rod] has the ability -- not all the time -- but to hit that ball out like only maybe Manny [Ramírez], [Vladimir Guerrero], a couple hitters can."
With the predicted rain finally beginning to fall as the stands thinned and the game lurched toward its fourth hour, Okajima came out for the eighth after getting Jorge Posada fly to center to strand two in the seventh. But the eighth would not be as kind, with a single to right by Hideki Matsui being followed by a triple by Robinson Cano over Crisp's head in deep center tying the score at 5 and extending a typically interminable Sox-Yankees game.
