By TERRY NAU

Sports editor

Some things I think I think:
The A.L. East pennant race gets a little more serious this week. The Red Sox visit Tampa for the Rays’ Alamo-like Last Stand. It will be Jon Lester vs. Matt Garza in tonight’s opener. Meanwhile, the Yankees visit Toronto for two games, drawing Roy Halladay tonight  and then sending No. 5 hurler Sergio Mitre to the mound on Wednesday.
Next up is a four-game series in the Bronx between Boston and New York. Everything that has happened in the 2009 season is just prelude to what occurs when the Sox and Yankees renew acquaintances. This is a tweaked Boston offense centered around new No. 3 hitter Victor Martinez. Kevin Youkilis is scorching hot and seemingly every other Red Sox hitter got his confidence back against Baltimore’s pitching staff on Sunday in an 18-10 victory.
When it comes to pitching, Boston still holds an edge over the Yankees. The Sox flip-flopped Lester and Brad Penny, who will pitch Wednesday night’s game in Tampa (against David Price), so that Lester can face the Yankees on Sunday. Smart move by manager Terry Francona, whose pitching rotation is less ominous with Tim Wakefield on the disabled list and Diasuke Matsuzaka lifting weights in Fort Myers.

The Yankees jiggled their rotation, too, holding Joba Chamberlain back for Thursday’s series opener in New York against Boston, which will send the beleaguered John Smoltz and his 7.00 ERA to the mound. Imagine if Boston, 8-0 so far against the Yankees, wins this game!
This is such a baffling pennant race, I called on the best Red Sox fan I know to explain it to me. I met Pawtucket’s own Chris Gauthier around 20 years ago when he wrote some stories about high school sports and Syracuse University basketball for The Times. When Chris graduated from Syracuse, he was hired by Boston Red Sox general manager Lou Gorman, a job that lasted only slightly longer than Sweet Lou, who retired shortly thereafter. Still, the time Chris spent working for the Red Sox gave him a unique insight into the franchise, long before it became the juggernaut we know today.
Here’s what Chris had to say on Monday after his favorite team.
“I was very, very upset when Dice-K (Matsuzaka) pitched in the World Baseball Classic,” he said. “That ruined him for this season. He won 18 games last year. Where would the Red Sox be this year if he were healthy?”
Ever the realist, Chris thinks the Yankees will win three of four games in this week’s series. He knows Boston’s rotation is weak right now with Smoltz and Buchholz pitching two of the four contests.
“But I do think the Red Sox will win the division,” Chris added. “Over 162 games, they are the better team. Now that we have Victor Martinez, I think our offense is better than the Yankees’ offense.”
Gauthier is still excited over his trip to Cooperstown two weekends ago for Jim Rice’s induction.
“Jim Rice was my idol growing up,” he admitted. “And after the ceremonies ended, we went down to the podium to see Jim. It was pretty crowded but Jim saw me and came over and shook my hand. He remembered me from the times we met when I was younger. He’s really a great guy.”
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Don’t you just love it when the Internet geeks throw a bunch of numbers at you to prove a point? I tell the SABR headcases that Bill James didn’t invent on base percentage. Ted Williams, Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle all had great OBPs in their day because nobody would throw them a strike. As fans back in the 1950s, we knew that Ted Williams hit .388 in 1958 but that more remarkably he achieved an OBP of .526. Ted’s career OBP was .482. Amazing.
As a Yankee fan, I’m harboring a few doubts about my entry in this horse race. The Yankees have a great offense, as we all know, but they don’t hit very well with runners in scoring position. Which is sort of important. New York has a team batting average of .277 but in RISP situations, it drops to .261. The Red Sox have a team BA of .268 but they hit at a .279 rate with RISP. In two-out RISP situations, Boston improves to .283 while the Yankees fall to .241.
So I guess the key is to get two outs on the Yankees and watch their hitters struggle. And the worst offender is second baseman Robinson Cano, a .304 hitter this season who bats .349 without runners in scoring position and .202 with runners in scoring position and two outs.
Here's a good one. Yankee pitchers in bases loaded situations are holding opposing hitters to a .241 batting average, third-best in the AL. Boston's pitchers are way back with a .325 average.
Maybe Boston’s pitching staff is a little overrated. Just kidding.
Boston's offense leads the league in creating bases-loaded situations, accruing 126 ABs. The Yanks are third with 116. Boston is hitting .278 with the bases drunk and the Yanks are at .267 (throw out Cano and it's .320; I'm jesting, of course).
The Angels have only created 83 bases loaded situations but are hitting, as you might suspect, an amazing .337.
Numbers-crunching is my new avocation. But I promise never to do it again in print.
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It was a little disconcerting to hear former PawSox pitcher Bronson Arroyo admit he was taking “andro,” a steroids precursor, from 1998 on, back when he was a minor leaguer in the Pittsburgh Pirates’ farm system and subsequently with Pawtucket.
Arroyo, a free spirit who always speaks his mind, said last week that he wouldn’t be surprised if he’s on the 2003 list of major leaguers who failed a drug test, because he may have taken andro that was “tainted” with steroids.
Not sure why Bronson had to volunteer that information, except that maybe he can’t keep his own mouth shut. The good news is, Arroyo parlayed his perfectly legal use of performance-enhancing supplements into combined salaries totalling $36 million between 2006-10.
And isn’t that what the whole Steroids Era in MLB was about? Players made money, owners made money, the TV networks made money, and most of the fans were happy to see home runs fly out of ballparks in record numbers.
What we have to do now, as fans, is forget about stats and just focus on wins and losses. It’s the only way to enjoy the game.