ANOTHER FOUR INNING START, ANOTHER LOSS

When a 4 run game is considered an "outburst" of offense, things aren't going great for your hitting. And when 4 innings is all you can get from 3 of your starting pitchers the first time through the rotation, your pitching isn't doing well, either. And when JC Romero has 4 appearances, and Jonathan Papelbon has 1, nothings really going well.

The Sox did put up a decent offensive effort in this game, which was thwarted by Tavarez's dullness, and the bullpen's unraveling. Had Tavarez gone longer and/or the bullpen kept it close, we could have won this game in the late innings.

The Man of the Game is Hank Blalock, he went 3 for 4 with a triple and a walk.

Here's the Bitch-Goat:
Tavarez: 0.5
Snyder: 0.1
Romero: 0.3
Crisp: 0.1

Honorable Mentions:
Jerry Hairston, Sammy Sosa, Ron Mahay

SCHEDULING ISSUES

Something I haven't really thought about until just now. The Sox have been on the road in Kansas City and Arlington. Two warm cities. Usually this happens for us. We almost never start a season at home, and typically for the first week or two, we play in warmer places. This might be due to the division that we're in. We play Baltimore, Tampa, and Toronto (dome) a lot so it's easy for us to begin the year in a warm place.

For some reason, the schedule makers at MLB have decided that cold weather cities be the location for games. The result can be seen in the Seattle/Cleveland series, which was completely wrecked by weather problems.

The weird things about these games is that there are warm weather teams playing against cold weather teams IN cold weather cities.

Just a few examples:
Tampa Bay playing in New York against the Yankees.
Toronto playing in Detroit, instead of in the domed Rogers Centre
Atlanta playing in Philadelphia
Florida playing in Washington
The Dodgers playing in Milwaukee
Arizona playing in Colorado
Seattle in Cleveland
Baltimore in New York
Minnesota in Chicago instead of in the MetroDome

Someone needs to tell MLB that cities like Boston, New York, Cleveland, Chicago, and Philadelphia are usually still cold in April. Furthermore, it can still be snowing in these cities in April. Maybe MLB is trying to get a step ahead of global warming, but for now, it's simply moronic that games are being played in the North when they could easily be played in the South.

RANGERS GET BY SOX

The Red Sox swung on the first pitch 11 times this game. This is part of the reason Robinson Tejada went 7 innings, throwing a mere 77 pitches. That's right, 77 pitches. The Sox had 34 total plate appearances, the Rangers threw 101 total pitches. Three pitches per plate appearance just doesn't cut it, unless the pitcher's throwing meatballs and you're crushing them. The Sox were not doing this.

Wakefield actually pitched well, but we wasted it. You don't get too many Quality Starts from your 4th guy in the rotation, especially in Arlington, TX.

We've all seen this before, the Sox go up against a pitcher for the first or second time, and struggle. Then you throw in Mirabelli being in the lineup, Ortiz not hitting yet, Coco having poor at-bats, and you've got a three hit shutout on your hands.

Here's a question. You're down 2-0 in the 9th, 2 outs. You've got a man on first. Why not pinch hit Wily Mo Pena for Coco Crisp in that spot? You've got Mirabelli behind this at-bat, so even if Coco gets a hit and moves Manny over, the game is most likely going to end anyway. Just why not put in Pena, who can hit for power, to replace Coco, who really hasn't looked good at the plate at all this season or in spring.

Man of the Game:
Robinson Tejada, 7 IP, 2 H, 0 runs, 3 BB, K, 0 HR

Bitch-Goat:
Wakefield: 0.1 - 2 runs, ER
Pedroia: 0.2 - Error, 0 for 3, K
Lugo: 0.1 - 0 for 3
Youkilis: 0.1 - 0 for 3
Ortiz: 0.2 - 0 for 4, 2 LOB
Lowell: 0.2 - 0 for 4, 2 LOB
Mirabelli: 0.1 - 0 for 3

SHOULD NEW YORK BE WORRIED?

I know it's early in the season, but my Schadenfreude that comes from watching New York struggle knows no calendar.

Carl Pavano went 4 innings on Opening Day. Last night Andy Pettitte matched that feet. The Yankees best pitcher, Wang, is on the DL until late April or early May, and the never injured Johnny Damon is missing time with a calf strain, and might be seeing the DL in very short time.

So should New York be worried? They did manage to go 1-1 against Tampa Bay, but this was thanks to the Devil Rays' bullpen blowing the Opening Day game open. The $195 Million Men* fell to the $24 million Devil Rays 7-6. Now imagine if they hadn't rained out Wednesday's game. What would have happened?

New York sends Mussina to the mound tonight. Mussina, as we all know, is one of the most overrated pitchers in baseball. He's capable of brilliance, but also highly capable of mediocrity. Then there's Kei Igawa. As much question marks as the Sox rotation had this season, Kei Igawa? That's a friggin' question. Then Darrell Rasner fills out the rotation. Another question.

Is New York worried? I don't know. Up where I live, the Yankee fans don't seem to be concerned. They still have that unjustified and downright silly cockiness. They still beat their chest and give their war cry "26 rings" and laugh with each other as if they had seen more than a fifth of those titles. They have more question marks than we do, folks. They should be worried, or at least, concerned.

* = I know the Sox have the 2nd highest payroll, but it is still $52 million LOWER than New York's. Five TEAMS have lower payrolls than the difference between us and New York.

DICE-KKKKKKKKKK

Wow! Wow!

WOW!!!

Daisuke Matsuzaka's line from his MLB debut: 7 IP, 6 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 10 K, 1 HR

Not too shabby. Now, we shouldn't get carried away. This was against the Royals, a group of inexperienced hitters. And this was the first time ANY of these guys have seen Daisuke, which means getting used to new arm angles, new movement on the ball, and so on.

Nevertheless, WOW!

Daisuke is obviously the Man of the Game. 10 Ks, 7 innings, one sole earned run. After allowing a single in the first, Matsuzaka held the Royals hitless until the 5th.

Honorable Mentions go to:
Jonathan Papelbon: perfect 9th inning, 2 strikeouts, first Save of 2007.
Manny Ramirez: 2/5, 2B, 2 out RBI.
Zach Greinke: 7 IP, 2 R, 1 ER, 7 K

On to Arlington.

REVENGE IS A DISH BEST SERVED COLD

It was very cold...in Kansas City



Wrath of Kahn? Anyone?

OK, so the Sox got on track last night in Kansas City with some good pitching and some good hitting. Simple right? The defense was not so good, and even though Joe Morgan thinks infield defense is the "most important part of the game" the Sox still managed to win 7-1, despite 2 to 3 errors from Mike Lowell. How did we win? Josh Beckett and the bullpen only allowed 1 run, and the offense kept piling on, building the score to 7 runs.

By in large, Beckett looked pretty good. He only went 5 innings, due to his pitch count being at 94 (plus the Sox were up 4-1 when he left). Had the game been a bit later in the season, Francona probably would have sent him out to at least start the 6th. He did have some trouble throwing strikes. He threw 46 strikes and 48 balls, hardly a good ratio. He walked 4 batters. But he didn't let the balls or the walks get him into major trouble. He only allowed 2 hits and 1 run. He struck out 5.

The offense as a whole went 8 for 32 at the plate, which was exactly the same as they did in our 7-1 loss on Monday. Couple of differences: we were walked 8 times last night, we had two doubles and a homer, we got hits IN A ROW.

JD Drew was the only Sox hitter to have multiple hits.

The bullpen allowed 1 hit in 4 innings of work. No walks, 3 strikeouts.

Josh Beckett was the Man of the Game, mostly because no hitter really stood out. Beckett threw A LOT of balls, but he was able to work around his walks, and keep the Royals offense down. He allowed no home runs, which was nice.

JD Drew gets an Honorable Mention for his 2 for 5 performance. Ross Gload of the Royals also gets an Honorable Mention for his 2 for 3 night, with a double, and a walk.

Matsuzaka against Greinke in this afternoon's rubber match.

And do you ever notice that the Yankees cancel games really, really early whenever they're having pitching difficulties? It just seems like if there's a rainstorm anywhere near the Tri-State area, and the Yankees rotation is full of problems, the Yankees call games like 2 hours in advance. Weird how that happens.

SOX FLUSHED BY ROYALS

The line is forming on the Zakim Bridge in Boston. Let's not blow this loss out of proportion, people. Let's blow it proportionally.

Schilling sucked, Meche was lights out. Nuf Said. The game was over by the 2nd inning. Schilling extended his first inning struggles, Meche calmed down his struggles.

I was forced to watch this game on ESPN. I wasn't too pissed off, it's nice when I can see the Sox on TV in Ithaca. Then Jon Miller and Joe Morgan came on the screen and my heart sank. Miller's got a great voice, and he's a great radio announcer, but on TV I think the way he comments on games is not interesting or confounding. Example: when Ortiz was up with 2 on, 1 out in the 8th, Miller said "I think a homerun here kills the rally." Homeruns ARE rallies in one fell swoop. Yeah, a series of 7 or 8 singles in a row makes the rally longer and therefore seem more productive, but I'll take a 3 run homer instead.

And Joe Morgan is just an idiot. He's worse than Madden. I was watching the Mets-Cardinals game on Sunday night and he declared that "Infield defense is the most important part of any team." Forget pitching, forget hitting, it's guys who do what Joe Morgan did, those are the things that matter. Morgan has no clue when it comes to anything but middle infield defense and line drive hitting. He knows what he knows, and that's it. When he says what pitch a pitcher should throw, he's almost always wrong in his prediction, and his reasoning makes no sense.

The only thing worse than listening to Miller and Morgan for 9 innings was watching Curt Schilling for 4 innings. Wow, he looked bad. He was dull, very dull. Not boring. Dull. His curveballs were horrendously awful. They almost never hit the right spots, nor did they break in any good way. He had difficulty throwing early strikes, and he depended on his 91 MPH fastball entirely too much. Hopefully this was just a one time thing. Otherwise, he may have to become a full time blogger very soon.

Meche was very very good. We didn't exactly hit well, but Meche did a great job at making the Sox hitters look like minor leaguers. The Sox got 8 hits, 6 of which were singles. One was a meaningless double by Lowell late in the game. One single was Pedroia's, who got thrown out trying to extend it to a double. Understandable considering the left-fielder was a transplanted first-baseman.

Nobody in our lineup really looked that good. Varitek, Lugo, and Crisp stuck out, but the fact of the matter was that the entire lineup had a bad day. Meche pitched well, give him credit for it.

We did get an opportunity to see a lot of our bullpen today. Lopez was great, Donnely looked good against one batter, Okajima gave up a massive homer but was otherwise good, Pineiro looked washed up on the mound, Romero's 0.2 innings were in garbage time.

As some of you may know, after each game I award The Man of the Game and sometimes the Bitch-Goat. The Man of the Game goes to the most outstanding player of the game, on either team, regardless of which team won. The Bitch-Goat is an allocation of blame for the Red Sox losing. In a loss, I divide the number 1 into tenths and distribute them to different players based on how I much I feel they were responsible for us losing. This season, I'm adding a category called Honorable Mentions. These are for performances that stood out, but weren't the most outstanding. I'll award up to 3 of these a game.

The Man of the Game for the 7-1 loss was Gil Meche. He went 7.1 innings, scattered 6 hits, allowed 1 earned run, only walked 1, and struck out 6. He had a rough 1st inning but settled down by the 2nd.

The Bitch-Goat shall be divided thusly:
Curt Schilling: 0.9 - 4 IP, 8 H, 2 BB, 5 ER, looked awful.
Manny Ramirez: 0.1 - 0 for 4, K, 2 LOB, GIDP

So this means that in my eyes Curt gets 90% of the blame for the loss, Manny gets 10%. In reality, Manny doesn't deserve a full 10% for this one, but someone on the offense has to take it, in my opinion.

Honorable Mention goes to Mark Grudzielanek. He went 3 for 5 with a double, 3 RBI, and 2 runs scored.

Honorable Mention goes to Tony Pena Jr. who went 2 for 3 with a pair of triples, knocked in a run, scored a run, walked, and had some nice defensive plays.

Honorable Mention goes to Joel Peralta who pitched the last 1.2 innings, striking out 4 Red Sox in a row.

The one thing that sucks about losing on Opening Day is that off day before the next game. You spend October, November, December, January, February, and March waiting for real baseball and some redemption from last season, then your team loses and you have to wait until Wednesday before they play again.

Beckett vs. Odalis Perez on Wednesday night.

2007 PREVIEW, PART 10: THE TEAM

Overrall the Sox look good for 2007. Certain things need to fall in place for us. We need the top of the order to get on base. We need Drew to give us some offensive production. We need Manny and Ortiz to continue being Manny Ortez. We need to score around 900 runs this season. We need our starting pitchers to step-up. And we need somebody from the bullpen to emerge and clarify the final few innings of games for us.

I think this team will have a shaky start, but will eventually be cohesive and successful. We'll win 95 games, which may or may not be good enough for a playoff spot. I think it will win us a Wild Card. I think we'll make it to the ALCS and lose, simply because Schilling will be worn down, as will Papelbon and Timlin. Hopefully I'm right that we'll make it to the ALCS, and hopefully I'm wrong that we'll lose.

Schilling vs. Meche, Boston vs. Kansas City at 4:10 this afternoon.

I, for one, am very excited. GO SOX!