Now Comes A True Test
Since I’m able to blog again and the Sox win when I do (see my previous post), I’m going to go ahead and look at the upcoming Chicago White Sox series.
First off, it’s not great that the Red Sox are playing in Chicago, they fair much better at home. Unfortunately, I don’t make the schedules. Chicago is the team to beat, they are the World Champions and until that title is relieved of them one way or another, all roads to the World Series go through them in the AL. The Red Sox have played some crappy ball the last few games, and really didn’t get much for breaks. The team will have to bring their A-game to Chicago if they want to compete with the White Sox, if they want to show they are real this year.
Jon Lester really hasn’t had a dominating start in his major league career thus far. He’s battled and survived. He’s yet to face a truly powerful AL line-up since his debut against the Texas Rangers. If Lester can come out and compete like he has, meaning giving the team 6 plus innings of quality pitching, it could be a great start to a very important series.
In the past the Red Sox handled Buehrle well. However, most of the Red Sox line up now is completely different. So, time will tell how effective he is against Boston now.
What’s great with this series is the pitching matchups just keep getting better. For the second game of the series we’ll see Beckett squaring off against Freddy Garcia. Both are 10-game winners but featuring plus-4 ERAs. I’m seriously looking for Beckett to step up and dominate.
A Schilling / Contreras battle headlines the finale of the series. Contreras is having a great year and has yet to lose a game, posting a 3.31 ERA. This could be fireworks before the All-Star break, and I really hope it’s a great series that the Sox (my Red Sox that is 
come out on top.