Red Sox / Seattle - Games 36 & 37

The Sox won 6-3 on Saturday and lost 5-4 last night. Both games featured a revamped batting order for the Sox.

Terry Francona switched David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez in the 3 and 4 spots. He put Edgar Renteria (and his .299 OBP) batting second and he put Trot Nixon fifth which moved the ineffective Kevin Millar to sixth and the very effective Jason Varitek to seventh.

I like the moves with the exception of Renteria batting second. I'm not sold that Renteria is comfortable enough in the new league to handle it. I would have preferred to see Bill Mueller and his .369 OBP batting second. I'm not complaining though.

Some notes from the two games:

- Trot Nixon hit his 8th career grand slam on Saturday. In his career - Nixon has come to bat with the bases loaded 89 times and 8 times has hit a HR. That's pretty darn good. Of course he still has only hit .270 in those situations (24 for 89).

- Johnny Damon had his 18 game hitting streak snapped with an 0-5 on Saturday.

- Manny Ramirez hit HR is both games and how has 400 for his career. The 400 put him 39th on the all-time list. Next up Duke Snider at 38 with 407.

- Manny is tied for 5th in the AL in HR with 10 and tied for second in the AL in RBI with 34. Yet that isn't good enough for Peter Gammons. What did Manny do to you Peter? Did he back into your BMW in the players parking lot?

- Kevin Youkilis leads the AL (unofficially) in pitches seen per plate appearance with 4.72. That's patience you can't teach. Youkilis is using that patience to his advantage too with a .391 BA / .517 OBP while hitting .429 with RISP. The Red Sox need to get him more at bats.

- Manny has 400 HR but just 164 have come in a Red Sox uniform. Manny trails Nomar by 14 on the Red Sox all-time list. Nomar is in 9th place. It is very probable that Manny will hit another 120 HR in a Red Sox uniform. That would get him past Mo Vaughn who sits at #5 all-time for the Sox with 230. The top 4 will be tough to crack though. Dwight Evans has 379, Jim Rice has 382, Yaz has 452 and Ted Williams leads them all with 521.