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1. Jolly Old St. Neck Wound, Moral IdiotYeah, I think that might have woken the O's up a bit.
But, Baltimore's kinda due against Boston, and for one game at least, it feels nice.
The rain delay was a killer, too. Smoltz was pitching very well, fastball at 92-93, very good location - really, outside of the first inning of his first start, he's looked very good (against WAS and BAL, to be fair). He had thrown only 52 pitches through 4 innings when the rain came. He was certainly in line to pitch two more innings, maybe three, and at that point, it's a different game.
So, bad night for the bullpen, but if Smoltz is going to pitch anything close to this well, the Red Sox will be thrilled.
Especially the two doubles by Luke Scott.
Not really. There was an infield hit that the catcher misplayed, and a bloop by Markakis that didn't lead to any runs. The other 11 hits they got in those two innings were hit pretty hard (or very hard). Two of the outs were a warning track flyout and a line drive right at Pedroia.
But not that inning. It was the 7th and 8th that they couldn't end in time, not the 5th or 6th - whichever inning that was, I forget.
Masterson's supposed to be a starter, so he really should have been able to handle at least 3 innings without tiring. If he can't then we should give up on him ever starting beyond spot duty.
I didn't mind the switch from Delcarmen to Okajima to face Markakis. The fact is that even if Delcarmen stays in and gets Markakis with Huff/Reimold/Scott due in the 8th it's probably the right call to have Okajima pitch that inning.
But, upon further review, there's no getting around it. Most of the pitchers got torched...
Yeah, ideally that would've been the way to go, but like JoseBiscuit noted, JM just lost it in that third inning, and that near-HR that Scott thwacked off the RF wall should've been a sign to stall long enough to get Delcarmen ready to come in.
But, as folks have already said, it's just one game, nothing to see here, move along, yadda yadda yadda.
Three months into the season, the AL East has generally been as advertised. Tampa did take a bit longer to get going, but where things stand on July 1 is in line with preseason expectations.
One of the talking heads on XM Home Plate was talking about how the Red Sox were a mortal lock to make the playoffs. While they are a favorite, because of a 4 game head start on Tampa, I can't see how they are a lock. All three teams are generally healthy, and you could make a strong case for any of the three missing the playoffs. It should be a great stretch run this year...
If that was too positive, I apologize. My next post will be how baseball is dying because of steroids and ARod.
Well, you always look for lessons when you lose about what to do differently next time, one game or otherwise. There's not much here beyond pulling Delcarmen too fast and not noticing Masterson was cooked and/or that Okajima wasn't fooling anyone.
I haven't looked at Masterson's splits lately and wonder if those improved from last year.
I had hoped that the always amusing Pants Pissers would be out in force today, but that does not appear to be the case [sigh]. Just not the same anymore.
They should try wearing pants.
To me the biggest lesson going forward was that Smoltz looked sharp. I thought that was a real positive.
Masterson doesn't have a big split though it's more a case of being less effective against righties this year.
OPS against;
2008: .787 LHB/.572 RHB
2009: .805 LHB/.717 RHB
2004 happened. And 2007 happened.
And more on-topic-wise, this doesn't seem to fit into any obvious pattern of losing, or suckitude, or of incompetence on the parts of the manager or players. It looks like an isolated incident, albeit an especially horrific one.
I do start wonder about the defense though when that many hits are coughed up in such a short span. Better defense might have prevented that loss.
I would recommend checking out weei.com (Sports radio in Boston). They are usually good for that stuff.
Seriously though, last night's loss, as horrid as it was, wasn't really a pants pisser. We can quibble with Francona a bit but he didn't do anything egregiously terrible and there weren't awful errors or anything, it was just rocket after rocket. Looking back on it I can't find a moment where I say "if we had just...we would have won."
It sucked pretty bad though. Really, once they got to 10-6 the only moment I thought we might survive was when Pie whiffed but even then I didn't feel good that had Papelbon gotten Markakis out he would have been able to navigate the ninth.
He wasn't missing a lot of bats, and he gave up several very deep fly balls. His two strikeouts came against Jones (who was clearly not right after his run-in with the wall), and Markakis (on a borderline pitch).
We'll never know what would've happened the third and fourth times through the batting order, but I'm not convinced the result would've been much different.
I thought Paps would slam the door but was hoping we'd extend him enough over 5 outs to make him unavailable today.
You might get the best of both worlds there. The Sox rarely use him three days in a row. The last time they did it he blew the save on day #3 (last September vs. Tampa). He's only thrown 15-16 pitches the last two days though so they might go to him in the 9th if circumstances warrant. I'm actually mildly curious to see how they would deal with it if the situation came to pass.
Can't blame them for trying - the umpires seemed quite content to let Varitek call balls and strikes, and award himself a base for being nearly hit by a pitch.
Depends on how much confidence they have in Bard I suppose. Ramirez is also available. They have the travel day (and Baltimore isn't that far away in the grand scheme of things) to rest.
It could be worse, they could've lost a home series to Natstown.
Another reason why I'm not worried...
Jim Palmer is a bad announcer, and he is usually somewhat evenhanded, but you could hear him stand up he was so disgusted with the strike 2 call on Pie. He evicerated the umpiring around baseball all year. It was brutal.
With any luck, he'll spend the ninth sitting in the bullpen, staring blankly (as is his wont), as Chris Ray mops up a 9-2 Baltimore victory.
VICTORY!!!!!!!!!!!
Wait, what's that? The Yankees won and gained a game?
Jeez, I just can't win.
edit - and paps pitched today as well. Remember his save on Monday was barely a pitch or two. Dan Bard was excellent today , especially once the game was tied - as was Ram Ram
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