Daily Jolt: Patriots Day, Orioles Just What Red Sox Needed to Right Ship

The Daily Jolt is a dose of baseball reality every weekday morning.

There's something about Patriots Day that seems to bring out the best in the Red Sox. Or maybe it's the Baltimore Orioles. Either way, it only took a long weekend at Fenway Park to put to rest many of the fears that began to bubble up after Boston's 3-6 start to the season.

It didn't look like it would be that way after the top of the second inning in the series opener Friday night.

Brad Penny had just given up seven runs and the Red Sox appeared headed for another loss and a 3-7 start. From that point on, Boston posted 30 runs against Baltimore's hapless pitching and got quality starts from Josh Beckett and Jon Lester in succession before Justin Masterson 5 1/3-inning, one-run gem Monday morning in a four-game sweep of the Orioles.

The Sox have won six straight Patriots Day games, a run that stretches all the way back to 2004, a fateful year in the team's history, of course.

They have been nearly as dominant against the O's lately. Boston has feasted on Baltimore since 2006, going 43-15 in the last three (and change) seasons, its best winning percentage against any American League team over that span.

It's not all that surprising to see Boston's pitchers put together a stretch of dominant starts like that. More and more the strength of the Red Sox has become the wave of arms it can throw at opponents.

But there had to be very real concern about the offense. Seemingly every scouting report on David Ortiz this spring has questioned his bat speed. Mike Lowell is coming off a serious hip injury. Jason Varitek is coming off the worst season of his career. With Jed Lowrie and Julio Lugo on the shelf, production at shortstop could be sparse. And thrust into an everyday role, it's unclear how center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury will perform.

At least for a weekend, those worries were alleviated:

• Ellsbury had three multi-hit games in the four-game set, including a 3-for-6 performance Monday that raised his average from .194 to .268.

• Ortiz boosted his average by 20 points over the weekend and doubled up his then extra-base hit total on the season in Monday afternoon's game with a double and a triple.

• Varitek hit his third home run of the year Monday, boosting his season line to .250/.341/.583 (AVG/OBP/SLG). That type of production is much closer to what we're accustomed to from the Boston captain.

• Reigning AL MVP Dustin Pedroia boosted his average by 102 points in the four-game set, thanks mostly to a three-hit game Friday and a four-hit game Monday.

Of course, a good offensive series against one of the weaker pitching staffs in the major leagues doesn't mean the lineup has righted itself, nor does it mean it is guaranteed to be one of the best run-scoring outfits in baseball again.

But the Red Sox don't have to be one of the very best offenses in the game to return to the playoffs, they just have to be above average. Beckett, Lester, Daisuke Matsuzaka, John Smoltz and the rest of baseball's deepest pitching staff afford them that luxury.