NEW YORK -- An inning after he laid out trying to catch a Jose Molina pop fly, Jacoby Ellsbury was pulled from Tuesday night's Yankee-Red Sox game in the fourth inning with a tight right hamstring.

After the game, he said the injury was "nothing serious," but wasn't sure if he would be in the lineup Wednesday.

"We'll see. I'll come in early and see how it feels," said Ellsbury, who stole his 16th base Tuesday night and depends on his hamstrings to get quick jumps.

"[Considering] how it felt during the game, it's a lot better [now]," he said.

Manager Terry Francona said Ellsbury let him know the hamstring was tight after he stole a base in the first inning. When he dove for Molina's ball in the third, he clearly felt it.

"That ball, he came in there and dove. He said he could feel it, and he was thinking about it, and again we're just trying not to do something that doesn't make sense. So we got him out," Francona said.

Ellsbury was replaced by Jonathan Van Every in center field.

Ellsbury joins Kevin Youkilis on the bench. Youkilis, who has a strained left torso, will also be re-evaluated Wednesday.

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Josh Beckett has seen a lot in his relatively brief major-league career. But he's never pitched from a mound so wet and mushy that he had to call out a grounds crew, mid-inning, to repair it.

There's a first time for everything.

By the sixth inning, a steady rain had deeply soaked Yankee Stadium. The Yankees picked that moment to threaten, putting runners on second and third with one out.

"I tried to battle through it. I don't think I've ever had a grounds crew come out and fix the mound before," Beckett said.

With the Red Sox in danger of losing their 4-3 lead, Beckett gestured to the stands for the grounds crew to come out.

"For me, I really throw against my front side. Not that I come down with a stiff leg, but I end up with a pretty stiff leg. So for me, the footing's pretty important," he said. "It was just one of those deals where, three or four pitches in a row, my foot had slipped, so you do what you have to do."

The grounds crew rushed out to repair the mound -- as the stadium loudspeakers played The Beatles' "Fixing a Hole" -- and Beckett tried it out with his foot, pronouncing it ready.

Catcher Jason Varitek saw Beckett slipping all over the place, and knew it was the right move.

"It was wet. My shoes were caked constantly. My cleats, excuse me. But then it looked like he was able to settle back in once they repaired things," Varitek said.

Following the mound surgery, Beckett struck out Ramiro Pena, and got a grounder from Jose Molina to end the inning.

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A little more than a quarter of the way through, the ongoing saga known as Yankees-Red Sox 2009 has been all Boston, all the time.

With three dramatic wins at Fenway Park, followed by two rainy contests at the new Yankee Stadium, the Red Sox have won the first five of the 18 Yankee-Red Sox matchups this year. So much for losing out on that Mark Teixeira thing.

There's rivalry-related pride in that, yes, but in a division considered the best in baseball, the results in the win column are the most satisfying, Dustin Pedroia said.

"A lot of those games could have gone either way," he said. "It's definitely nice that we're on the winning side of them. We won a lot of tight games, and that's definitely big when you look up at the end of the year."

Jason Bay has slaughtered the Yankees so far this year; it's safe to say that the Red Sox wouldn't be 5-0 without his .500 batting average, 3 home runs, and 10 RBI against New York. But he's found that, as big as the games are billed to be, they're just good divisional wins.

"I think sometimes it gets played up to be a little bit bigger than it is. I do understand that it's a huge rival . . . but you don't go home feeling any more satisfied than you would beating another team, just because they're your rival," Bay said.

"Obviously there's a little more emotion in these games, which makes it a little different than just a regular series. For the most part, I think it's good, but once you go through it a little bit, you realize it's just like another series," Bay said.

dbarbari@projo.com