Numbers

3: The number of outs recorded on Mike Redmond's ground ball to third base in the seventh inning at Jacobs Field last night.

2: The number of times the Yankees have given up 16 runs or more in the past week. Ouch.

2: The number of games Mike Timlin needs to play in to reach 1,000 career appearances. The career stats are fun to look at:

He has had 497 teammates in all, according to baseball-reference.com, from Dave Parker, who was 40 when Timlin was a rookie, to Clay Buchholz, the 23-year-old Sox prospect who was 2 1/2 years old in 1987, when Timlin made his professional debut in Medicine Hat, Alberta,

but more interesting are his current stats, which have got lost in the Sox' recent surge:

He's no longer the team's primary setup man, a role passed to Okajima and now Eric Gagné, but no one can accuse him of just hanging on, either. In his last 21 appearances, spanning 27 1/3 innings, he has been scored upon just once, allowing two earned runs, for an ERA of 0.66 in that span.

If the Sox have a successful end to the season, then you can add Timlin to the growing list of unsung MVPs.