An added attraction: Delcarmen in pen

Just two weeks after an epic collapse -- walking in the winner in a nine-run, ninth-inning comeback -- Manny Delcarmen has moved from concerned to, one would assume, elated, called up from Pawtucket last night to replace sent-down starter Kason Gabbard.

With an offday between series in New York and Texas, on Thursday, the Red Sox have no need for an extra starter until Josh Beckett is able to come off the 15-day disabled list May 29, when he will pitch against Cleveland. So the team will carry an extra reliever, extending its bullpen to eight members for the next week.

"If we need some help, we don't want to get caught short," manager Terry Francona said after yesterday's 6-3 win over the Braves. "He's been doing pretty well. It's nice to have guys you can go to to maybe help you for a 10-day stretch. I mean, we're not going to go with 13 pitchers. But just to stay away from a couple people and still think we have chances to win games will be important."

Tim Wakefield, Julian Tavarez, and Curt Schilling are the starters for the three-game series in New York, followed by the offday, then Daisuke Matsuzaka is in line to start the first game of the Texas series on an extra day of rest. Wakefield, Tavarez, and Schilling would follow on normal rest in the last two games of the Texas series and the first of the Cleveland series before Beckett's return.

Delcarmen, days after allowing that walk and days after a stint in which he lost a game on a three-strikeout, two wild-pitch inning, had admitted he hadn't pitched well enough in recent outings to warrant a callup, saying, "I talked to [Pawtucket manager Ron Johnson] and my agent. They flat told me, 'The way you've thrown these last three times, you know for yourself. I mean we'll give you all the positives that we can from your outing, but you know we can't recommend you to go to the big leagues right now.' "

Clearly something has changed.

Since that point, Delcarmen, 25, has made four appearances, allowing no runs over six innings with eight strikeouts.

He has given up just two hits and two walks in that time. Overall in Pawtucket, Delcarmen has gone 2-2 with a 5.03 ERA in 14 appearances with 28 strikeouts in 19 2/3 innings.

With the Red Sox up by double digits in the division just 43 games into the season, it's easy to get overconfident.

While Francona and his troops are careful not to get too far ahead of themselves, Braves pitcher John Smoltz doesn't have any such caution.

When asked about his own team trying to keep the first-place Mets close in the National League East, so they don't get into a Red Sox-Yankees situation, Smoltz answered with a candor not often found when talking to the Red Sox or the Yankees.

"People say, 'Hey, there's a lot of baseball left,' " Smoltz told Dave O'Brien of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "But the Red Sox pretty much have cemented themselves in a position where I don't think they can be caught."

Devern Hansack was alerted to the fact that he would be sent down to Pawtucket after Saturday night's game (to make room for yesterday's starter, Gabbard) before being called up. "It can maybe mess with a young kid," Francona said. "RJ [Johnson] and those guys told him, 'You're coming up to pitch.' Just because we didn't want him to think, 'Maybe if I throw six innings good, maybe I can stay.' " . . . Despite the discrepancies in opponents this weekend -- the Red Sox played the Braves, while the Orioles played the Nationals, one of the worst teams in baseball -- the unbalanced interleague schedule isn't what bothers Francona most. "We build our team to have David [Ortiz] as our DH, and [Kevin] Youkilis as our first baseman, and [Mike ] Lowell as our third baseman," he said. "We have a pretty high payroll and we go into these cities and we can't use our team. Last year we were fortunate enough to play pretty well, but we're not as good a team as we can be. It probably ends up evening out in the end, but the part about the DH, that bothers me more than the other stuff. Maybe that's because our DH is so good."

Mike Timlin should throw off a mound today for the first time since going on the disabled list with tendinitis in his right shoulder . . . Gabbard struck out a career-high seven over his five-plus innings in his second career big league win . . . Youkilis extended his hitting streak to 13 games, including a home run in his second consecutive game (he didn't play in the nightcap Saturday), the fourth time he has accomplished that. It's a career-high hit streak, during which Youkilis is batting .446 (25 for 56) . . . Jason Varitek, who struggled through April at .239, is hitting .333 (17 for 51) in May . . . Hideki Okajima pitched yet another scoreless inning, bringing his streak to 20 2/3 innings. That's the longest for a Sox lefty since Bruce Hurst's 21 2/3 innings in 1987.