• Preview
• Recap
• Bleachers

Schilling takes mound with Red Sox on brink of elimination

Oct 20, 2007 - 1:37 PM Cleveland at Boston 8:21 pm EDT American League Championship Series Indians lead, 3-2

BOSTON (Ticker) -- The Boston Red Sox have their backs against the wall.

The Red Sox will try to avoid elimination and force a decisive Game Seven when they face the Cleveland Indians in Game Six of the American League Championship Series on Saturday.

The Indians had a chance to close out the best-of-seven series at home on Thursday. However, Cleveland once again could not solve Josh Beckett in Game Five as Boston's righthander pitched eight strong innings, allowing just one run while striking out 11 batters, in a 7-1 win that kept the Red Sox's World Series hopes alive for at least one more game.

Beckett improved to 3-0 with a 1.74 ERA with 26 strikeouts and a walk in 23 innings this October and 5-2 with a 1.78 ERA in nine postseason games all-time.

While Beckett is creating his own postseason aura, Game Six starter Curt Schilling's legacy is already in place.

Schilling, who is arguably the best postseason pitcher of all-time, holds a 9-2 record with a 1.93 ERA in 16 starts in the playoffs. However, the 40-year-old righthander did not look like himself in Game Two, surrendering five runs and nine hits over 4 2/3 innings as the Red Sox suffered a 13-6 loss in 11 innings.

"I don't ever look at it as a selfless situation, and that it's all on me," Schilling said. "It's very simple now. I go out and do my job (Saturday) and we win, or I don't and we lose. I don't think that that's too much pressure or too little. It's just reality.

"We put ourselves in this position, and I helped put us in this position for better or worse. I've got the ball (Saturday), and if I can do what I know I'm capable of doing and I can execute, we can win. And if I don't, then it's going to be very, very tough."

Schilling will once again be opposed by Fausto Carmona, who will also be looking for a better outcome in Game Six.

The hard-throwing Carmona lasted just four-plus innings last Saturday, getting charged with four runs, four hits and five walks while throwing just 51 of 100 pitches for strikes.

"I was trying to be a little fine," Carmona said. "I've got to make sure I'm not going to leave any pitch down the middle of the plate. I was thinking just a little too much.

"I'm going to try hard to stay aggressive, the same way I always pitch. Whatever happened last time, I've forgotten about it, it's going to be a new start and I'm looking forward to it."

The sinkerballer, who was dominant in his Game Two start in the AL Division Series against the New York Yankees, has been miserable in three career outings at Fenway Park. The 23-year-old is 0-2, giving up nine runs, seven hits and seven walks in five frames - two out of the bullpen.

Indians pitching coach Carl Willis agrees that Carmona doesn't need to make adjustments, but does need to execute his pitches.

"I think always to keep the ball on the ground, we like to try to play station-to-station defense or pitch that way, so to speak," Willis said. "To keep the ball on the ground here more times than not, I think you're going to have a lot of singles. So you have to group back-to-back hits or a significant amount of hits put together in one inning to score.

"So that makes it a little more difficult, I think, to create a big inning, which we're going to try to stay away from obviously, so I think that is a key."