Boston Red Sox : News and Notes 07/26/06

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The Boston Red Sox pounded out a season-high 18 hits on Tuesday night to beat the Oakland A's, 13-5. Kevin Youkilis, Mark Loretta, Mike Lowell, and Coco Crisp each contributed 3 hits to the effort. Manny Ramirez, Trot Nixon, and Jason Varitek each had 3 RBI. Youkilis hasn't raised his AVG over .300 again, but he is 9 for his last 19. Loretta, fairing even better, is 13 for his last 29 and is at .309 for the season. Five out of his last six games have been multihit games. Crisp is hitting just .229 in July, but is showing signs of breaking out by going 6 for his last 14. Ramirez is in the middle of an 11 game hitting streak in which he's batting .436 with 4 homers.

Trot Nixon's power outage is over. Nixon hit his 7th homer of the year yesterday, his first in 122 AB's. He claims to be 100% healthy and can't find a mechanical flaw in his swing. After a hot June that saw him batting .386/.465/.554, he is just .194/.307/.242 in July.

Curt Schilling wasn't his best, giving up 4 runs in 6 innings and tossing 105 pitches just to get that far, but he pitched well enough for his 13th win.

David Wells may be taking the mound for Boston as early as next week. Keith Foulke will throw one more side session before the team comes to a decision on what to do with him. Matt Clement threw from a distance of 75 feet for the third day in a row, but is still experiencing pain and is still considered a long way away. Tim Wakefield has not resumed throwing yet.