Somebody pointed out right after the game that this felt like how the Tigers won games last year. To me, it kind of felt like the way the Tigers lost games in 2005. They had good overall performances and hit balls hard, but they couldn’t put the Red Sox away when they had the chances. Obviously, that was more the case in the second game than the first, but they had two surprisingly strong pitching performances from Miner and Durbin go to waste.

Despite the hard-hit balls in Game 2, there was a feeling that they needed to convert those, especially with Curt Schilling struggling to find the strike zone.

"We let this game get away," Gary Sheffield said. "We had men on. We just didn’t get them in. When you let them hang around in this ballpark, you know they’re going to come through eventually. We didn’t get the runs that we needed. We had them out there, and we just let them go."

Said Inge about Schilling: "He got away with so much tonight. There were balls he was leaving right down the middle that guys hit right at somebody."

What goes unnoticed in this game is the job Durbin did against Manny Ramirez. Rabelo said they basically threw everything at him and worked him inside and out. That’s the first time he struck out three times in a game to the same pitcher since Jose Contreras did it to him on July 24, 2005.

I would complain about how day-night doubleheaders make for long days, but what Zach Miner went through to start on three hours sleep and three hours notice is something else. There’s a school of thought that suggests those short-notice outings can actually help a pitcher, that he doesn’t have enough time to get nervous. Even if you buy that, though, you’d still like your starting pitcher to get a little more shut-eye. It was an impressive outing, and you could argue it was a better pitcher than the Zach Miner we saw during his final handful of starts last year.

Here’s your Game 2 lineup:

1. Granderson, CF
2. Polanco, 2B
3. Sheffield, DH
4. Ordonez, RF
5. Guillen, SS
6. Casey, 1B
7. Thames, LF
8. Rabelo, C
9. Inge, 3B

Enjoy the nightcap. At this moment, the sun just peeked out between the clouds to shine on the Boston skyline.

Maroth became ill overnight and is being sent home this afternoon to avoid getting anyone else sick in the cramped visiting clubhouse at Fenway Park. Zach Miner was already being recalled as an extra reliever for the doubleheader, but today was going to be his turn at Toledo anyway. His stats aren’t looking good, but he had a strong outing in his last start there.