Lester dominates, Gomes homers, Red Sox win 4-2: Game Recap

Since the All-Star break only 5 teams have done it. 'It' being beating the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Well, that us until today. At 7:21PM, the Boston Red Sox felled a baseball team riding one of the most dominant streaks in recent sports history. They beat the Dodgers by a margin of 4-2. 

Beginning the drama on just the second batter of the night, things got interesting as Shane Victorino did something he has become notorious for in just this single season alone. Not making any move to get out of the way of a pitch. For the 10th time in 2013 he was hit by a pitch taking his base and soon becoming a 1 out base-runner in the 1st inning. 

By the time Johnny Gomes came to bat 2 batters later, Victorino had scored, Pedroia stood at second and Mike Napoli had just drove in an RBI single and was at 1st. As for Johnny Gomes, he did not wait long to drive home what would go down as the game winning run. Taking a first pitch fastball right over the middle of the plate Gomes lined the ball high and deep to a distant left field wall. In just a matter of seconds Gomes had belted his 11th home run of the year and in turn had put the Red Sox up 4-0. 

Now the score would stay that way all the way until the 8th inning. A large part of that was the pitching of John Lester. Through the first 3 innings, Lester had not allowed a hit and despite allowing a lead-off walk to Yasiel Puig a few nifty double plays by those behind him meant that by the end of the night, Lester had thrown just 101 pitches in 7.1 innings. He dominated allowing just 3 hits on the entire night and just 1 through 6 innings. 

But no matter how good he was, things got interesting in the bottom of the 8th inning. After Lester earned an out via the pop fly, Lester walked Carl Crawford and was yanked from the game. But in the end, some may have a case to say that that might not have been the best idea. All night long, the Sox had been dominant at turning the double play as 3 of the 4 batters Lester had walked had been doubled off already. But still John Farrell made a managerial decision and well he may have screwed up. 

Junichi Tazawa came into the game and threw just 10 pitches before, after a single and a strike out he, like Lester was replaced by bullpen specialist Craig Breslow. But even that did not work out as Breslow allowed a 2 run double that suddenly made this a ballgame...that is until Farrell made up for whatever mistakes he had made to that point in the game.  

All season long, Koji Uehara has been the saving grace in nearly each of the now 76 wins the Sox have accumulated this season...and he was no different Saturday night. Koji hurled a perfect inning and a third to seal the win for the Sox and put them in a position to do what no team has done in almost 2 months. Win a series against the Dodgers.