Lopez won't dwell

CLEVELAND - You think it's easy being Javier Lopez?

Your mind is constantly churning out scenarios about whom you will face and when. You go over the swings of Travis Hafner, Grady Sizemore, Trot Nixon, and you envision how you're going to pitch to perhaps the one batter you might get.

On Saturday night at Fenway Park, Nixon came on to pinch hit, and Lopez's job was to hold the game at 6-6 in the 11th. He threw a breaking pitch in a decent spot, but Nixon stayed with the pitch and blooped it into center field for the go-ahead single. The floodgates opened and the Indians throttled the Sox bullpen in a 13-6 Game 2 victory.

Lopez's numbers as a lefty specialist this season haven't been great; he went into last night allowing a .293 batting average to lefties. He's actually been much better against righthanders, holding them to a .176 average.

Lopez has no way to explain this. His sidearm style should make it difficult for lefties to pick up the ball. Lopez isn't beating himself up over the Nixon hit. It was a softly hit ball that found a hole. Sometimes you just have to give credit to the hitter.

"I've just learned to deal with not dwelling on things that I can't control," Lopez said. "That was a breaking ball. I thought it was in a good location and he just got the hit."

Nixon said it is indeed difficult to pick up the ball in Lopez's delivery.

"That's really hard for a lefthanded hitter," Nixon said. "You're not really seeing too much of the ball before it's on top of you. You have to really be right on with your swing and your timing against something like that.

"It doesn't matter how hard he throws or doesn't throw, when that ball is coming out of that arm slot, it's totally different than what you're used to. I always feel fortunate when I can get a hit off someone like that.

"I'm sure it's the same when [Tim Wakefield] goes out there and hitters are seeing that knuckleball come in. You have no sense of timing. It's not that much different with a guy like Lopez."

Lopez is often in a do-or-die situation, and because he's been able to fool righthanded hitters with his changeup, he's faced more batters than he normally would. But it's something he's learned to cope with as he's gotten older.

"I've really been able to slow the game down and just try to focus on executing the pitch," Lopez said. "I've tried to block out the bigger picture. I know the reality of it is I'm coming in to face a lefthanded hitter or two, or if there's a stretch of lefthanded hitters, I might get a righthanded hitter in there."

Lopez holds the distinction of having played with this year's National League finalists, the Diamondbacks and Rockies, before his Red Sox career began.

"Both teams were really building from within," said Lopez. "I remember in Arizona we had a veteran like Tony Clark who led us and Colorado had Todd Helton. Todd was more of a guy that would let his play on the field do the talking. We had Preston Wilson then and he was more the older, veteran leader-type guy that did the talking, and I know Todd was OK with that.

"But it's not like the Red Sox, where you have a lot more veteran players. It was just like Mike Lowell said after we lost the other night. He said, 'OK, we got it out of our system. If we had to have a game like this, might as well have it early in the series and so we can just move on.'

"That's the kind of leadership we have here. None of us felt good about what happened the other night, but hopefully it's one game and we just put it behind us and focus on the next thing at hand.

"When you work out of the bullpen - whether you are a closer or a situational-type guy like myself - you can't carry over the failures from appearance to appearance."