Messy Night at Fenway

It was ugly last night. Ugly defense, ugly pitching, ugly weather. The Blue Jays hit a trio of 2 run homers (2 off Doubront, 1 off Albers), the Sox made mistakes in the field, and a battle between two pitchers having off-nights ended with the Jays on top 9-6.

This was one of the few times that Felix Doubront hasn't pitched well enough to give the Sox a good chance to win the game. He'd been averaging 8.51 runs of support per 9 innings, but he hadn't needed that to get his 8 wins. He's typically pitched decently enough for the Sox to win if they score 4 or more runs.

Not last night. He struggled to throw strikes at times. And when he did hit the strikezone, the Jays hit him. 51 of Doubront's pitches were strikes, 25 of those were hit in play. You can blame unfortunate bounces for some of Toronto's scoring, but when a pitcher allows a team to put the ball in play that often, bad things happen.

It's important for the Sox to rebound from this ugliness and not allow it to become a mini-streak. Daisuke is on the mound tonight. He faces Aaron Laffey. He's a lefty making his first start of the season.

Elsewhere, Kevin Youkilis made his White Sox debut and was 1 for 4. And I already dislike Brent Lillibridge. When asked about moving from team-to-team, he called baseball a "sorority." People are stupid sometimes.

Photo Credit:
AP Photo