The American League recognizes a player of the week -- wait for it -- each week, but for last week, they decided to choose two. Conveniently enough, both of them are on the Red Sox: first baseman Mike Napoli and closer pro tempore Andrew Bailey were named co-AL players of the week for April 15th through the 21st. According to MLB public relations, this is the third time a pair of Sox have come away with the honors.
Napoli might have started his Boston career off a bit slow, but in the last week, he picked things up, hitting .345/.406/.690 with one homer, a triple, five doubles, and 10 runs batted in. As for Bailey, who is the team's closer while Joel Hanrahan recovers from a hamstring injury, he threw five innings with a 3.60 ERA. That sounds worse than it is -- it's just two runs -- but since he struck out eight, walked just one, and came away with a victory and three saves in his five appearances, the voters apparently didn't hold that pair of runs against him.
As this is just the third week for which there was a weekly award this season, half of the season's recipients are Red Sox. That's fitting for an award based on ridiculously tiny samples with impressive-looking lines, but with that being said, the more Sox make an appearance for little weekly awards, the better the team is likely doing.