Tampa Bay in First Place?

The Tampa Bay Rays (16-12) begin a three-game weekend series against the Boston Red Sox (17-13) starting tonight at Fenway Park.

For those of you who think it's still early to pay any attention to the standings, believe it or not, the Rays are tied with the Red Sox for first in the AL East.

Check that. The Rays are percentage points ahead of the defending world champions by virtue of having played two fewer games.

Tampa Bay in first place at any point of the year. Who would have thunk it at the start of the season?

And the Rays haven't even gotten any contribution from staff ace Scott Kazmir, who'd been on the disabled list with an elbow strain since March 21st. Kazmir, however, is scheduled to make his first start this weekend.

Granted, it's only May 2nd, so it's still early. And Tampa Bay is only four games over .500, and you've got to think that Boston will somehow pull away. The Yankees and Blue Jays will get their act together soon enough.

But for now, if the Rays can win two of three at Fenway, or even pull of a sweep, they could be telling the rest of the American League that they're for real.

Of course, the Rays had already shocked the baseball world last weekend by sweeping their three-game set with the Red Sox in Tampa.

Tampa Bay will send three solid pitchers to the mound this weekend to try and knock off the Sox again: Edwin Jackson (2-2, 3.86), James Shields (3-1, 2.54), and Kazmir.

The Red Sox will send Clay Buchholz (1-2, 4.08) to the hill on Friday night in the series opener. Buchholz has had a decent year so far--though one rocky outing against the Yankees jacked up his season ERA--but has already lost to the Rays earlier this season. The sophomore dropped a tough 2-1 decision at Tropicana Field last Saturday despite his complete-game, three-hit effort.

Buchholz had a shutout going in that contest on April 26th until surrendering a game-winning, two-run homer to leadoff hitter Akinori Iwamura in the eighth inning.

The Red Sox have had trouble scoring runs for most of the year so far, and needed two ninth-inning tallies to beat the Blue Jays twice earlier this week in a couple of low-scoring affairs, and then were shut out by Toronto on Thursday.

The Red Sox have scored only four runs in their last five games.

Slugger David Ortiz has a team-high 21 RBIs, but is hitting only .196. The Boston DH is showing signs of breaking out though, having had back-to-back two-hit games against Toronto.

Will the Rays' winning streak against the Red Sox continue? Or will Boston make a statement by pulling off a sweep this time around?

We'll have to find out this weekend.

But for now, it's official: we're no longer in April, and Tampa Bay is leading the East.