Entries Tagged 'Ortiz' ↓

Yesterday afternoon’s game was filled with some great “stoopit” trivia stuff. As pointed out by Boston.com:

• Kevin Youkilis has broken the record for consecutive games without an error by a first baseman (194)
•  Jon Lester is the first left-handed Sox starter to record a win in Oakland since 1995.
• Terry Francona still misses chew. (Yes, I made that one up, but I guarantee you he does.)

It’s not a bad thing to take care of Oakland, regardless of their 1 and 2 starters. They needed to walk out of there with the series win and give the fans a nice start to the season.

With J. D. Drew starting last night, the team finally felt a little like normal, I suppose. Tomorrow night, Tim Wakefield gets the start in Toronto’s home opener and Kevin Cash will begin the campaign to prove he’s not Mirabelli.

First homers for Papi and ‘Tek felt good as well. Nice to see it starting to become a “regular” season.

We’ll start with Schill:

Schilling today agreed to an $8million contract and has incentives that could climb to a final $14 million contract. Not a horrible deal if he likes money, because that’s the motivation for him to drop 20 pounds of weight and gain 10 pounds of muscle in those shoulders.

Papi underwent arthroscopic surgery today to repair torn cartilage in  his knee. The release from Dr. Gill said it went fine, but I’m also worried about his shoulder. I’d be thinking rotator cuff surgery if rehab doesn’t work. If that’s the case, he’ll be out until May or June at the least.

YOUUUUUUUUUK!!! Congratulations to Mr. Defense. Youkilis is a gold-glove first baseman and he absolutely deserves it. This kid comes out of the minors with a lot of people talking about his walk to hit ratio and what does he do? Everything else. He didn’t have any errors in the regular season and can blame the only one he had in the post season on bad dirt. Nice, nice job man.

Sports Illustrated released this story yesterday regarding Papi’s season and the verdict is: he’s perfect.

Combined scores for 2006 and 2007 make David Ortiz only the seventh player since the statistical formulas and compilation rules were established in 1981. Not too shabby for a bad shoulder, a bad knee and a goofball hitting behind him.

It’s the Transformer interstitial that drives me crazy, not the “Cleveland Rocks” song playing every 45 seconds.

Even with a back-to-back-to-back home run derby, the Sox can’t collect ANY more offense… What a waste of talent. During the regular season they hit .278 as a team. That was 5th best in the AL. This post season? Don’t want to think about it, but I would guess it’s around .220 or slightly lower.

Here are my questions so far:

1. Why not Ellsbury in right? You have a righty on the mound and he could do some damage.
2. Why go through even ONE more batter with Wake? Even though Delcarmen gave up the home run, it was time to pull Wake the minute they realized he was going up in the zone.
3. Why not pinch hit for Mirabelli? Wake is out of the game — go get ‘Tek.
4. What the hell do you do for an encore after three straight losses? Their backs are to the wall.

It’s not looking good, but then again, it didn’t look good in NY in ‘04. Can they do it again? Maybe those home runs were what they needed…

No way does Francona trust Gagne in ANY game, no matter WHAT the situation… He must be put on ice for the remainder of the post season.

I’m one of those people who decided to stay up and watch the whole thing. I wanted to see how badly the bullpen was going to fall apart once Gagne caved in. You’re wondering what would have happened next if Gagne hadn’t come in? Well, Lopez proved his instability for us. I actually said out loud to no one in particular that the kid was going to collapse. Lester? He was warming up at the time as well. What would have happened if Lester had just simply come in for long relief without the call to Gagne? I know hind sight is 20-20, but that was not the right call. I personally don’t want to see Gagne come into the game unless it’s 20-1, either side.

Schilling and Carmona were dead weight as well. They both came out of the game, having little impact on all of this. (In other words, they were both completely ineffective.)

Congratulations to Manny (23) for breaking the post season home run record formerly held by Bernie Williams (22).

Congratulations to Ortiz for tying the post season record for consecutive times safely reaching base (10).

Congratulations if you stayed up even though the bullpen was sleeping.

MAN that stinks.