Entries Tagged 'the game' ↓

I had a tome of a post planned for today and then got completely torn in fifty directions. I’ll now condense my thoughts to bullet form as not to kill you like a Curt Schilling diatribe.

The Good

• The Sox are back in first place (by 1.5 games).
• The Rivalry continues, with or without Daubach or Nixon.
• Ellsbury’s hand did not get separated from his body when he made the play against Longoria.
• Sean Casey is a “company man” and is willing to kinda’, sorta’ play the role of Trot Nixon.
• That whole “what do we do with the Ellsbury / Coco platoon thing” is over for a while…
• The Rays have left the city after going 0-6 at Fenway this year.

The Bad

• The Rays have left the city.
• Jonny Gomes is now one notch above Posada on the disgust-o-meter (and that’s saying something).
• Carl Crawford is now a mortal enemy and a TOTAL punk… (insert other choice expletives).
• Jon Lester hit two people and will be suspended.
• J. D. Drew had NOTHING to do with the fight. NOTHING.

The Stupid

Coco Crisp has become an insane human being over a small, silly chain of events. When he woke up yesterday morning, there was no question that if he got hit he would charge the mound and take a swing. It was premeditated and it wasn’t even warranted in my opinion.

He went after the wrong player and then instead of taking it like a man and walking to first base, he charges the mound like a little super freak.

All kinds of baseball etiquette was blown away this week with the Rays and the Sox. Let’s hope they put this away and forget about it.

The Sox are just having the worst time on the road this year. In the current trip, they’re 1 and 5 with no signs of life. Hopefully Baltimore will be the right place at the right time?

Having had to travel all night probably wasn’t too pretty, but the Sox do get an off-day today as they prepare for a four-game series against the Birds in Fenway South.

Manny is still stuck on 499, joking  with reporters last night that he didn’t want to hit #500 in Seattle because the press conference would be too late and it would delay them getting to Baltimore. Okay, sure. Although, Wake would have probably not minded since he took the shutout loss (1 to nothing on the wing of Bedard).

Speaking of Bedard: This is the FIRST time I’ve seen Bedard act anything close to “Ace” status since the deal the Mariners did in the Spring for five players. Baltimore has had more accumulative success with their received players than that of the young lefty. I’m sure Seattle is hoping that last night is the beginning of something great and not a one-time event.

So! The Sox fall to 1.5 games behind… ugh… the Rays… and may lose Dice-K depending on how the MRI comes out today. We’ll see…

The thought of Bartolo coming in as a 5th starter and taking Clay’s place while he deals with his fingernail issue is just as predicted: Bartolo is like picking up an in-season free agent. The start last night by Colon was so economical that he looked like he could have taken another 4 innings.

Papi, you sir, are a rock star. By the way, Papi is making his presence known off the field as well. He’s been speaking out about the pace of games and has made some comments in the direction of Bud Selig about how MLB should stop pressuring people to quicken the pace.

Pedroia is the kind of player everyone should have on their team, but one or MAYBE two would be enough.

Between the lazy chase of Manny in left to miss a play (resulting in a two-run lead), to Jon Lester’s lazy afternoon, laboring through 5 and 1/3 innings of awful pitching and Julio Lugo’s  13th (!!) error of the young season, the Sox need to wake up and get hungry.

Right now, there are a few people who have their heads in the right place but it seems like the team as an entity is experiencing some trouble clicking on all cylinders.

Last night’s game in Minnesota (one of my all-time least favorite places to see a televised game — probably the top one now that the Seattle Dome of Doom is dead) looked like an exhibition game or Spring Training.

The Sox need to get a little fire going. Maybe some frustrating losses (and a couple more blown saves, perhaps) will put the fire into the team. Who can say. It just seems like they mailed it in last night.

Dice-K was more erratic than usual and he felt it. As he got out of the inning in the fifth, he waited for Crisp to catch the ball, hung his head down and walked, almost dejected, from the mound to the dugout. I’m sure that was a rough day at the office and, quite frankly, not the best way to “earn” his third win.

When people look at his record this season they’ll wonder how he did so well. He’ll undoubtedly do better than last year’s 15 wins, and it’ll most likely come from the run support the team has failed to show in a  consistent manner.

Some thoughts:

• Youk, Manny and Drew are carrying the offense right now.
• Delcarmen is still someone I want to hold on to. His fastball has good movement, so he definitely has the tools to set up Pap if Oki goes awry.
• Papi is having the worst statistical start to the season out of all major league players right now.
• Still uncertain about Aardsma. I’ll need to see him for a good month before feeling good or bad when he comes in.
• Yankees haven’t got it together yet, but they will, then they’ll be a totally different team next time around.
• Cleveland next. Getting out of Fenway for a few days might be a bad thing.