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Today’s Winners:

• Rich Harden - The often hurt starting pitcher showed a flash of his brilliance today. After giving up just one run over six innings, including nine strikeouts, against the defending World Champions, teams are going to be paying special attention to his starts from this point forward. He not only won today, but he could have made hismelf a winner at the deadline today, as well. No one has ever questioned his talent, just his health.
• A’s bullpen - After Harden’s day was done, the A’s turned to their bullpen to finish the final three frames. Santiago Casilla, Keith Foulke and Alan Embree combined to go three innings, giving up just two hits and striking out six.
• Emil Brown - Brown may have been a loser yesterday, but today he hit a three run homer to put the A’s up 4-0 in the third inning, seemingly putting the A’s on cruise control on their way to victory.
• Kurt Suzuki - Suzuki didn’t disappoint his homeland during his stay in Japan. He went 2-for-3 with two doubles today and also scored a run.

Today’s Losers:

• Jon Lester - Lester got the chance to start in Japan because of Josh Beckett’s back problems. After today’s outing, the Red Sox may be wishing they would have just left Lester behind in the states and have a hurt Beckett pitch instead. Lester gave up four runs on five hits and lasted just four innings today. His three walks didn’t help him out much either.
• David Ortiz - Ortiz finished hitless again and is leaving Japan with a .000 batting average.
• Jason Varitek - Varitek must not have read our Winners and Losers from yesterday, as he duplicated his output in the second game. Varitek, again, went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts, taking him to 0-for-8 for the season and striking out 75% of the time.

Filed under: Boston Red Sox, David Ortiz, Emil Brown, Jason Varitek, Jon Lester, Kurt Suzuki, Oakland Athletics, Rich Harden, Winners and Losers