Hide the Gatorade Cooler

The Red Sox lost to the Minnesota Twins last night 7-6. It was the second time in three days that they lost via a blown save by Jonathan Papelbon in the 9th inning. Papelbon, usually a sure thing, suddenly looks vulnerable. In Detroit, Papelbon took his frustrations out on the Gatorade cooler, last night he only publicly beat up his hat. In Detroit the game was lost through a series of strange events, including an accidental hit on a check swing and a damaging error.

But, last night was a straight out loss. He just was not intimidating to the Twins, and that forced him to fatally mix in an ineffective splitter. Consider this. Papelbon threw 18 pitches in the 9th inning. Out of those 18 pitches, he had zero called strikes, and only one swinging strike. Every other pitch was either a ball, a foul, or a hit. Since the fastball was not quite doing the trick, he went to the split finger, but was not able to execute it well. He looked "okay" after the first three batters giving up a lead-off single, followed by a sacrifice bunt and a foul pop out. But, with two outs, the Sox allowed Delmon Young to steal third base, setting up a dangerous situation with the Sox clinging to a one run lead. After four straight fastballs to Gomez leading to a 2-2 count, Papelbon went to the split finger, but Delmon was not biting as he watched two of them go by for ball 3 and ball 4. Young proceeded to steal second base, putting the winning run in scoring position for Mike Lamb. But, Papelbon could not get the fastball by Lamb. The count was 1 ball and 2 strikes after four straight fastballs in the upper 90's when Papelbon again went to the split finger, and Lamb stayed with it, sending a lofting single into left field to send both runners home and win the game. So, what went wrong? The splitter was not effective and lost the game.

On another sour note, Julio Lugo continues to ring up the errors. Last night's damage came in the 2nd inning and cost the Red Sox 2 unearned runs. With two outs and a runner on second, Lugo blew an inning ending ground ball to keep the Twins at the plate. A quick steal and a single then sent two runs across the plate. Sloppy play forced the game to be closer than it should have been.

The offense did well, making Bonser go "BOOF" in the 5th inning. Bonser was unable to get out in the 5th. A single by Dustin Pedroia, a walk to David Ortiz, and a single by Manny Ramirez loaded the based for Mike Lowell. Lowell hit a double, two runs scored, and Bonser went - "BOOF" - time to hit the showers big guy. Every batter in the Sox lineup had at least one hit, and the six runs scored would normally be enough for the win. But not last night. Put that one in the column of wins that got away.

Tonight, Daisuke Matsuzaka heads to the mound to right the ship. Dice-K has had a good start to the season, as evidenced by his 5-0 record. It will be important to keep the ball around the plate against this Twins team that seems to have a very good eye for the strike zone and rarely chases bad pitches - a favorite tactic of Dice-K's. The Twins counter with 25 year old left-hander, Glen Perkins, who will be making his first appearance with the Twins this season, and his first start for them ever. Perkins has made a few appearances over the past two years, all in relief. He struggles in the minors earlier this year, but has gotten back on track recently, giving the Twins the confidence to call him up in place of the injured Scott Baker.

This one won't be easy.

(Photos courtesy of Yahoo Sports) (Gatorade kick - AP Photo by Duane Burleson)

Red Sox Wake Sleeping Tigers

One day after Tim Wakefield hypnotized the Tigers to sleep with his dancing knuckle ball, Clay Buchholz woke them up with the smell of blood. In the second inning, Gary Sheffield laced a ball off of Buchholz for a single. Buchholz was okay, and got out of the inning unscathed, but the wound left the smell of blood drifting across Comerica Park. The sleepy Tigers took the field in the top of the third, and slowly the aroma wafted past their noses. Slowly their whiskers twitched at the detection of the scent, and their excitement rose. The once sleeping Tiger lifted its head, stretched and let out a fearsome roar.

Claws fully extended, the Tigers came up to bat in the bottom of the scoreless 3rd inning. By the end of the inning, all nine batters had been to the plate, seven of them reached first base, and 4 of them had crossed home. Buchholz returned to the dugout, alive, but tattered and torn. The Sox fought back in the fourth with a 2 run home run by Kevin Youkilis, but the Tigers were not done with Buchholz yet, scoring one more run off of him in the fourth inning on 3 consecutive singles. Buchholz was finished, nothing left but bones strewn across the lair.

The Sox still had fight left in them and were able to score 2 more runs in the 5th inning as Tigers' starter Armando Galarraga wore down as well. Galarraga surrendered a lead off walk to Jason Varitek and hit Julio Lugo to put the first two batters on. A Jed Lowrie sacrifice fly, and a David Ortiz single pulled the Sox back within one run with the score now Tigers 5, Red Sox 4.

There has been discussion about how Julian Tavarez has not pitched in a long time, and without regular work, he'll become rusty and ineffective. That no longer needs to be debated. Sent in to help the vanquished Buchholz, Tavares was as rusty as the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz (pre-oil can). Terry Francona gave him the entire 5th inning to manage, and he managed to turn that into three singles, a double, and three more Detroit runs. When a Tiger eats, he gets tired and goes off to rest and digest, which is what Detroit wandered off into the jungle to do. Meanwhile, the Red Sox, faced with a daunting 8-4 deficit, did not give in but rather continued to chip away.

In the 6th inning, Youkilis hit his second home run of the day, this time a solo shot, and in the 7th inning, it was Mike Lowell's turn for heroics. With two on and two out, Lowell ripped his third home run of the season into the left field stands to tie the game at eight. Then in the 8th inning with two outs and runners on first and second, Tito had a hunch and pinch hit Dustin Pedroia for Jed Lowrie who was 0-3 with a sacrifice fly up to that point. Pedroia did not let Tito down and hit a single to bring in JD Drew from second base to put the red Sox on top for the first time in the game, 9-8.

Hideki Okajima held the Tigers scoreless in the 8th inning, with some help from a questionable base running move. With runners on first and second, the result of back to back singles, one out and Gary Sheffield at the plate, Tigers' manager, Jim Leyland, sent the runners on a 3-2 pitch. Sheffield swung with enough force to tear down a small building, but missed for out number two, and Varitek fired down to third base to nail Magglio Ordonez to end the inning.

So, Red Sox fans everywhere sat back, put their feet up, and said, "Papelbon is coming in, this one is over". Well, not so fast. Matthew Joyce, playing in only the second big league game of his career, tried to check his swing on a Papelbon changeup and made contact with the ball. The ball lazily rolled out onto the field like a well executed bunt, and Joyce easily reached first base. Next up was old pal Edgar Renteria who hit a weak grounder to short. Lugo panicked and tried to rush in order to possibly get the lead runner at second, and bobbled the ball for an error. Ivan Rodriguez bunted the runners to 2nd and 3rd, and Curtis Granderson grounded out. So, with 2 outs, Placido Polanco, who had a hot bat all night, stepped up. Papelbon threw him three straight balls, before finally getting two strikes to even the count. His final pitch of the night was a fastball that jammed Polanco. Polanco swung and shattered his bat on the pitch. As parts of the bat flew everywhere, the ball lofted over Lugo's head and landed safely in shallow left field.

The Tigers had won. They loped off into the grass to lick their paws and digest their meal.

But, the Red Sox went back into the dugout, and loaded both barrels of their big game shotgun (also known as Josh Beckett). Tonight, the Tiger hunt commences.

(Baseball photos courtesy of ESPN) (Shere Kahn image courtesy of Animated-Views)

Beckett to the Rescue?

While I hope the title of this post is true, I don't want to imply that pitching was the problem last night. Clay Buchhulz pitched the second best game of his young career last night throwing an 8 inning complete game only allowing 2 runs on 3 hits to go with 9 strike outs and 2 walks. The big problem was that the Sox could only muster 1 run, forcing Clay to take the loss for a brilliantly pitched game.

I'm sure there are fans out there who are questioning Terry Francona's decision to leave Clay in to face Rays' hero, Akinori Iwamura with a runner on and two outs in the 8th inning and the Sox clinging to a 1-0 lead. The alternative was to bring in a well rested Jonathan Papelbon to get the final four outs to preserve the win. The result was that Iwamuri guessed right in his chess match against the tandem of Buchholz and Varitek and was sitting on a curve ball that came in a little too high in the strike zone and left the ball field very high into the right field stands for a home run.

In hindsight, you'd love to have seen Papelbon come in, but at that moment Buchholz was still pitching very strong, and had the game well under control. If Terry had pulled Clay at that point, I would have thought, in that moment, that he should have let Clay get the last out in the 8th. Iwamura was 0-3 with two strikeouts against Buchholz up to that point. After allowing the home run, Buchholz struck out Carl Crawford on three straight pitches to end the inning, so you can see he still had it. It was just a chess match where Iwamura got in the last move. It is a shame Clay could not get a win for such a great night.

Big Papi was out of the lineup tending to a sore post-operative knee suffered from his desperate, noble, but ill-advised head first dive into first base the night before. That, combined with Sean Casey being placed on the 15 day DL, was enough to silence what had been up to now, a rather loud Red Sox Offense. But, Tampa Bay youngster Edwin Jackson had a terrific night as well only allowing a single run on 5 hits in 7 innings to keep pace with Buchholz.

The one run the Sox scored, they were lucky to score, thanks to a wild pitch. Speedy Coco Crisp was on first with one out. Jackson may have been distracted by Coco's threat to steal second, but he unleashed a wild pitch that rolled far enough away from the catcher that Crisp was able to sprint all the way to third. Jackson still almost escaped the inning but after striking out Julio Lugo for out number two, Jacoby Ellsbury hit a sharp grounder deep to third. Evan Longoria made a fabulous play off the ball to his right and fired a rifle shot to first that beat Ellsbury to the bag. But with Ellsbury running, he had to rush the throw and it pulled Carlos Pena off the bag. Ellsbury was safe, and Crisp scored the only run of the night.

Prior to the game, the Sox called up outfielder, Brandon Moss, to replace the injured Sean Casey. An interesting move, because the Sox are down to only 4 infielders on the active roster, so how does calling up an outfielder help? Moss has been doing some work at first base in Pawtucket to give him some more versatility for Boston, but he's still very new to the position. I suppose in an emergency, Moss would play first, and we almost got to see that strategy in action. In the fifth inning, Julio Lugo had issues with the home plate umpire's view of the strike zone, and got in a heated argument, not thinking that getting kicked out of the game would be the worst thing he could do for the team. Terry Francona was out of the dugout faster than chicken running from Colonel Sanders to get Lugo back in the dugout. Smarten up Lugo!

A loss today would allow the Rays to pull into a tie in the standings with the Sox. But, they have to get past a well rested Josh Beckett first. Just watch out for Beckett to keep from over-throwing. When a power pitcher is feeling too strong, he can overthrow and ride too high in the zone and get into trouble.

(Photos courtesy of Yahoo Sports)

Power Outage Continues

Red Sox lost last night 7-2 to the long overdue Tigers. We knew that was coming - just didn't know when. A team like the Tigers was certainly not going to winless for much longer.

I spoke about Jon Lester in the past stating that he has to have sharp command to be effective. Last night he looked very strong, regularly hitting 93 mph with his fastball, but he had trouble consistently spotting it. His off speed pitches were good, but like I said before, when his fastball command is off, batters take advantage. The result was 5 hits, 4 walks, and NO strikeouts. The good news is that he looked strong - perhaps too strong. Sometimes when a pitcher is feeling too strong he has trouble with control - ball tends to sail a bit coming out of your hand.

Mike Lowell made a terrific play in the second inning, but twisted his thumb fielding the ball and is now day-to-day with a sprain. Luckily it is only a sprain. Francona moved Youkilis over to third and inserted Sean Casey in at first base, batting in Mike Lowell's spot. This created a bit of an achilles heel for Tito in terms of baseball strategy. The new lineup now featured Casey (lefty), JD Drew (lefty), Varitek (switch but prefers lefty), and Ellsbury (lefty). Tigers' manager Jim Leyland took advantage of that in the 6th inning by bringing in the left handed pitcher, Bobby Seay with no outs, and Manny Ramirez on first. The strategy worked for Leyland as Casey flied out, Drew struck out, and Varitek flied out. Seay came back out for the 7th and got the last lefty, Jacoby Ellsbury to also fly out. So, while Casey batted well in Lowell's spot (going 4 for 4 and scoring a run) it did make the lineup vulnerable to a good lefty reliever.

Julio Lugo's name appeared quite a bit. In the 4th, he barely escaped a throwing error as the ump missed a close call in the Sox' favor, but in the 5th he made a great play on a tough shot getting Gary Sheffield out at first. Lugo also contributed with the bat, going 2 for 3 with a double and an RBI, and a stolen base. Oh, wait, the ump missed that one too, this time not in ourfavor as Lugo was called out stealing. My read of the replay was that he was safe by a beat.

The real trouble, again, was an offense that still cannot get going. The Sox had 9 hits, but only scored 2 runs, with the top of the order (Pedroia, Youk, and Ortiz) going a combined 0 for 12. Papi still can't hit his way out of a paper bag, and it is hurting our run production.

Through 9 games this season the Sox are 4-5 and have been outscored 41-30! Consider last season at this point they had outscored opponents 43-28. They were 5-4 at this point last year, so it is not like they have suddenly dropped off. But, the bats need to get going, particularly the bat of Big Papi.