Entries Tagged 'Youkilis' ↓

It’s happening already: the talk about the Sox taking on the Cubs in the World Series.

Right now? I’m not sure anyone wants to face the Cubs. They seem to be on a holy war effort to claim a post season spot, and even with Soriano taking a six week break, the Cubbies are on pace to keep the best record in baseball by the All-Star break.

Papelbon bailed out…

It took back-t0-back home runs by Youk and Crisp (you may want to cut and paste or bookmark this page since I believe it’ll be the last time that happens in Boston) to save Paps from a loss. He blew the save (his first blown save since May 9), and it looked like Hanson was going to cough it up again in the 10th, but the Sox stuck it to them and Youk can have his ALMOST cycle day in Cinci’ (he was just missing a triple).

If you don’t know anything about baseball, that sounds incredibly lascivious.  Thankfully, most of the people here have a little baseball knowledge to know that Youk is so hot with the glove AND the bat that he took the spot of the ailing Big(?) Papi. Ortiz’ right knee, the one he had surgery on a few months ago and that troubled him all of last year, is bugging the hell out of him and relegating him to the least dangerous place he can be: el bencho.

If it weren’t for past utter destruction in the clutch with said ailing knee, Ortiz would be thrown on the disabled list quicker than you can say Mike Hampton.

Youk, on the other hand, is doing unrealistically well this young season and definitely deserves to sit in the 3 hole for a bit. Well, at least until Papi decides to be himself again.

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.

Kevin Youkilis and the Sox avoided arbitration and came to agreement on a 3 million dollar, one year deal. Initially, Youk was asking for 3.7 and the Sox countered with just over 2 million.

Nice pay day for a solid defensive and go-to clubhouse guy.

This means that Epstein has successfully avoided arbitration with any of his players since taking over as GM.

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.