Red Sox starting pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka is 6-3 with a 4.56 ERA in 12 starts this season, picking up his first victory since June 7 in his last outing.\u00a0 In that appearance, he held the Toronto Blue Jays to two runs on six hits in six innings of work in a 3-2 win at the Rogers Centre.\u00a0 The right-hander is 3-1 with a 4.57 ERA in seven road starts, but has issued 20 walks and allowed 40 hits in 41.1 frames.\u00a0 Matsuzaka will be making his seventh career starts versus the Athletics, going 3-1 with a 4.18 ERA, including an even 1-1 mark and 4.91 ERA in three outings at the Oakland Coliseum.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Oakland has won five straight games and now face a challenging schedule ahead with the Red Sox followed by the AL Central-leading Chicago White Sox.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s good going into these next series since we\u2019ve been playing well,\u201d said manager Bob Geren.\u00a0 \u201cThey\u2019re a little banged up, but they are still a great team.\u201d\u00a0 The Athletics are still having trouble hitting the ball out of the yard, ranking last in home runs, as the team is on pace to hit just 101.\u00a0 The club pushed its daytime record to 21-10 on the season with yesterday\u2019s victory, but now will have to solve problems with its 25-36 mark at night.\u00a0 Oakland has the second worst night record in the league behind only the Baltimore Orioles.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Athletics starting pitcher Ben Sheets is 4-8 with a 4.63 ERA in 19 starts and received 15 runs of support in his last outing.\u00a0 In a 15-1 home victory over the Angels, he tossed six shutout innings and allowed just two hits.\u00a0 The right-hander is 4-3 with a 2.93 ERA in 10 home outings compared to a winless 0-5 mark and 6.66 ERA in nine road starts.\u00a0 Sheets is an even 1-1 with a 2.03 ERA in two July starts, managing to issue just a single walk in 13.1 innings.\u00a0 He will be making just his second career start against the Red Sox, dropping a 6-4 contest at Fenway Park on June 2.\u00a0 He allowed four runs and seven hits over six frames while striking out just a single batter.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Bettors will acknowledge the Red Sox being 14-3 in Matsuzaka\u2019s last 17 starts as a road favorite.\u00a0 The under is also 11-3-1 in his last 15 starts as a favorite away from Fenway Park.\u00a0 Oakland has won five of the last six meetings here in the Bay Area, but the team is a dismal 1-6 in Sheets\u2019 last seven starts versus the AL East.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Two teams that started the second half of the season in opposite directions meet for a series in the Bay Area. Boston Red Sox at Oakland Athletics Boston has dropped nine of its last 12 games and have fallen 6.5 games back of the New York Yankees in the AL East race.\u00a0 The Red Sox […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":4951,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444],"tags":[1357,1567,2277,69,1115,1449],"class_list":["post-5746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-al-west","tag-ben-sheets","tag-bob-geren","tag-boston-red-sox","tag-daisuke-matsuzaka","tag-oakland-athletics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/181"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5746"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5760,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5746\/revisions\/5760"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/Kevin-Kouzmanoff-athletics-82-150x150.jpg\")
Boston has dropped nine of its last 12 games and have fallen 6.5 games back of the New York Yankees in the AL East race.\u00a0 The Red Sox offense sputtered in the first series back from the All-Star break, scoring just 11 runs in four home games against the AL West-leading Texas Rangers.\u00a0 The lineup still leads the majors in runs despite the recent slump, which has been caused by having four regular contributors on the disabled list.\u00a0 The Red Sox are 22-20 on the road this season and are in a stretch of playing 14 straight games against the AL West division, traveling to Seattle and Anaheim after this series.\u00a0 Boston is 9-5 against Western opponents so far in 2010.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n