Lowell and behold

With smoke and mirrors and a lot of help from Mike Lowell, the Red Sox swept the Baltimore Awful-O's over the weekend and have cut the Yankoffs lead in the AL East to 1 game.

After being hit in the head on Friday night (above), Lowell has come alive. He had a hit and an RBI on Friday night and 2 more hits on Saturday before busting out a grand slam in the 1st inning yesterday and made a game saving play at 3rd by backhanding a ball that could have cleared the bases and tied the game. Instead the Sox won 11-9. He also made this catch Friday night:

While Lowell has been on fire, it was Manny's heroics that won the game in 10 on Saturday, after the Sox spent all day coming back from major holes created by the pitching staff. The 8-7 win was just the latest in a series of walkoffs that have kept the Sox afloat. Sadly Manny's 27-game hitting streak ended yesterday.

So what does all of this mean for the Sox future? Not much. While they head into a 3 game series with the suddenly reeling Tigers (5 strait losses), the Sox are still a mess. Save for a nice start from David Wells Friday night, the starting staff and bullpen was beaten up again, giving up 18 runs to a crappy Orioles team in 3 games. Jonathan Papelbon struggled again yesterday, even after two solid innings on Saturday. The hard hitting Tigers and Yankoffs are in town for the next 8 games and have far superior pitching staffs to Baltimore. Bats have to stay hot if the Sox wanna stay alive...

Here comes the Tigers...