Ellsbury to show his range?

BALTIMORE - Rookie Jacoby Ellsbury's single in the fourth inning gave him at least one hit in each of the nine games he has played since his Sept. 1 recall. Just before his callup, Ellsbury had a 25-game hitting streak snapped in Pawtucket, a club record, when he went 0 for 4 Aug. 31. But between Pawtucket and Boston, he now has hit in 34 of his last 35 games. During his streak in Pawtucket, Ellsbury batted .377 (40 for 106). In his last nine games with the Sox, Ellsbury is batting .406 (13 for 32), a number with special resonance in New England.

With Manny Ramírez presumably close to a return from a strained oblique that has sidelined him since Aug. 28, pressure almost surely will mount on the Sox to play Ellsbury, perhaps at the expense of J.D. Drew, who had doubles in games here Friday and Saturday and blooped a single, stole second, and scored the winning run yesterday. But Drew is just 7 for 43 (.163) in his last 15 games.

To date, manager Terry Francona has publicly said Drew will continue to play. "We will not run from him," he said this weekend. More likely, Ellsbury will be rotated among all three outfield spots to give the three regulars - Ramírez, Drew, and Coco Crisp - a day off. That's a feasible scenario for the rest of the regular season. The tough decisions will come in October: Ellsbury will be on the postseason roster; that's a lock. But will the kid play?

When Dustin Pedroia struggled in his September callup last fall, Sox officials said it is dangerous to predict future performance on how a kid does in his first taste of the big leagues. But Nomar Garciaparra, who hit four home runs and drove in 16 runs while batting .244 in his September callup in 1996, gave a preview of things to come, and Ellsbury's performance so far evokes memories of 1974, when the Sox called up a young center fielder named Fred Lynn, who hit .419 (18 for 43) with two homers and 10 RBIs. The next season, Lynn was the American League's Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player.

Going with flow

When Melvin Mora hit a broken-bat single off Jonathan Papelbon in the ninth, it was the first hit Papelbon had allowed in a span of 26 at-bats since Aug. 17 (Orlando Cabrera of the Angels). That's one out short of a no-hitter for a starter. Mora was also the first runner Papelbon had allowed since walking Brian Roberts Aug. 31, a span of 17 hitters. Papelbon, who set down lefthanded hitters Aubrey Huff (popup), Steve Moore (whiff), and Freddie Bynum (whiff), has one streak still going. He has retired 33 straight lefthanded batters, the longest such streak in the majors, and one more than Damaso Marte of the Pirates and Chien-Ming Wang of the Yankees.

"I feel like I'm in a pretty good zone," Papelbon said. "Mora got that broken-bat hit today on a pitch I wanted to go up and in a little bit more on.

"I don't know what I'm doing out there. I'm just going out there and I know I'm putting together some good streaks. I don't write down what I'm doing or anything like that. I just go out the next day and try to repeat what I did the day before. I had a good splitter today with good depth, so I used it."

Hitting a wall?

One major league scout who watched Daisuke Matsuzaka in Saturday night's 11-5 loss agreed with the assessment by pitching coach John Farrell that Matsuzaka was overthrowing and thus was up in the zone with his fastball. His curveball and changeup were nonexistent, especially in a 42-pitch third inning in which the Orioles scored seven times.

But while the Sox downplay the fatigue factor, the scout mentioned that Matsuzaka's size and maximum effort, coupled with his history of a lighter workload in Japan, make him an obvious candidate for hitting the wall. Before three of his last five starts, the Sox gave Matsuzaka an extra day's rest, but his ERA in that span was 9.57 (28 ER in 26 1/3 innings). He's been giving up home runs in bunches lately, six in his last four starts spanning just 20 1/3 innings. He also has walked 11 in the last four starts.

"Obviously his command wasn't there," Francona said yesterday in his pregame session with reporters. "I just think sometimes as the game heats up, pitchers have to throttle back. That's not always the easiest thing to do."

Fielding cleanly

The Sox entered play yesterday ranked second in the league in fielding percentage at .986, just a percentage point behind the Orioles, and their 74 errors also ranked as second-fewest. The last time the Sox made multiple errors in a game was Aug. 17, when shortstop Julio Lugo made two in the second game of a day-night doubleheader against the Angels. In 22 games since, the Sox have made just eight errors and allowed two unearned runs. First baseman Kevin Youkilis has not made an error at that position this season and has an AL record streak of 181 games. Rookie second baseman Dustin Pedroia has two errors in his last 67 games, third baseman Mike Lowell has made two in his last 58 . . . Of the Orioles' four starters in this series, two came out with injuries - Garrett Olson (forearm strain) and Jeremy Guthrie (oblique strain, yesterday) - and one, Daniel Cabrera, was ejected. The Orioles have lost 16 of their last 19, and have the Angels, the leaders of the AL West, coming in for three. "This year is a tough year," shortstop Miguel Tejada said after a day in which the Orioles fell to a season-low 20 games under .500 and are 11-28 in one-run games. "Last year was a tough year. Now we have more injuries, and as the season is almost over, we don't want anybody getting injured now. It's just a tough year, what can we do? We've just got to keep playing." The Orioles have six games left against the Yankees, a team they've unexpectedly had success against, going 8-4 to date . . . Call it coincidence, but the Sox are 34-14 in games in which Alex Cora has started, 12-8 when he has started in place of Lugo, who sat yesterday.

Gordon Edes can be reached at edes@globe.com.