50 Games Left for Red Sox

Is it me or has this season seemed much longer than 112 games? Every week feels like a month, every month like half a season.

With 50 games left the Red Sox are only 6 games in the loss column out of the Wild Card. That deficit isn't insurmountable, certainly not given the time the Sox have to close the gap. Even if there are 3 teams the Sox need to leapfrog over while closing that gap.

To use a brutally overused sports cliche, the Sox control their own destiny. Especially since 30 of the 50 games on their remaining schedule are against other teams vying for the AL Wild Card spots.

They play the Athletics 3 times, the Angels 6 times, 9 pivotal games against the Orioles, 6 with the Rays, and 6 against the Blue Jays. If they do well in these 30 games, especially the 9 against Baltimore, then they should make the playoffs.

It's a mixed blessing to face these opponents as it means that the Red Sox will spend most of their last 50 games playing good teams. Apart from these 30 games against Wild Card contenders, they'll play the Yankees 9 times. The only "breaks" for the Sox will be this 4 game series in Cleveland, 4 games against the Royals, and 3 games in Seattle.

I hate the phrase "control their own destiny" so I'll try another way to describe the position the Sox are in: They're responsible. It's on them to beat these Wild Card contenders. They'll have no one to blame but themselves if they fail to beat them.

Photo Credit:
AP Photo

Beckett: The Worst of What Red Sox Do Worst

Whatever clubhouse problems Josh Beckett may or may not be a part of, the simple on the field facts are that he has undeniably and unequivocally sucked this season. Yesterday afternoon he gave the Sox 5 innings, 8 hits, 8 earned runs, 2 walks, 2 strikeouts, 3 homeruns. And that ERA of his is once again flirting with 5.00 (4.97 to be exact).

Among starting pitchers that have enough innings to qualify, he is 86th in ERA. Only 12 starters have worse ERAs.

How long does this guy continue to get the ball? How long until he has a roster spot? How many pitchers out there can give the Sox what Beckett gives them, only for less money, and with less drama?

This loss typifies the Sox season. One part of the team did very well (the offense), but their efforts were sabotaged by other parts of the team (Beckett and the bullpen).

Adrian Gonzalez hit 3 doubles, each time knocking in a run. Cody Ross hit a homerun and knocked in 2. Will Middlebrooks hit a 3 run homer. 9 runs should be enough to win.

But Beckett dug a huge hole for his teammates. And when they were finally clawing their way out of that hole, the bullpen dug it deeper. Clayton Mortensen didn't do his job. Then Alfredo Aceves allowed a sacrifice fly that gave the Rangers the lead. He nearly allowed a 2 run homer after that.

Aceves wasn't meant to be the closer on this team. But they let a pretty good one go. Then they signed one who has a history of injuries. And he got injured.

There are good pieces on this team. And there are bad ones. The bad pieces counter the good pieces and the result is a .500 team. It's like running a faucet on full hot and full cold. The result is a tepid stream of mediumness.

It's only August, but looking forward to the 2012-13 off-season I'd prefer that the Red Sox focus on removing the bad pieces that infest this team, as opposed to adding more good pieces. This team is sick. The top priority should be to get rid of the viruses, the bacteria, and all that ails this team. Then the good pieces can be healthy and thrive.

The Sox are in Cleveland for 4 games. The Indians aren't a good team, and the Sox need wins. This is an opportunity for them to win. Although we've seen them fail to take advantage of such opportunities.

Felix Doubront faces 8-11 Ubaldo Jimenez, who had a good June, but has struggled the rest of the 2012 season.

Photo Credit:
AP Photo

Red Sox Return to Reality

Jon Lester is 5-10. That's simply shocking. He's never lost 10 games in a season before. And he's managed to reach 15 wins every year since he became a full-time starter. He'll be hard pressed to reach that mark with only 51 games left on the schedule.

Lester wasn't bad. He was excellent the first time through the lineup. The Rangers eventually got to him. He was charged with 4 earned runs in 6.2 innings. But 1 of those runs was scored with Mark Melancon on the mound. He was good enough, but his teammates weren't.

Speaking of the bullpen, they've been very shabby lately. As a unit they started the season poorly, then settled into a groove of dependability, and now they're back to being a problem. Had Melancon done his job, and Junichi Tazawa done his job, this game could have been a 3-3 tie that went to extra innings.

Instead, the bullpen allowed the Rangers to build some insurance.

Meanwhile, the only scoring the Sox could manage came thanks to Will Middlebrooks and his pinch hit 3 run homer. I'm sure Bobby Valentine will take credit for that one.

Apart from that Ryan Dempster shut the Sox lineup down. Carl Crawford helped by getting picked off.

The Sox were mad at the umpiring, and maybe justifiably so. But the Sox take umpire-baiting to a new level. Jon Lester gets upset with about two calls per inning, and shows it with feminine snaps of the glove and passive aggressive behavior. And none of the Sox hitters are shy about lingering in the batter's box after striking out and expressing their opinion.

Maybe the umpires are sick of the Sox' whining. I know I am. Maybe the umps make unfavorable calls because the Red Sox irritate them.

I can't blame them.

Josh Beckett takes the mound for the Sox tonight. This is a chance for him to do what he's paid to do. He hasn't made a Quality Start since July 15th and the Sox could really use one.

Once again, Beckett is up against a good opposing pitcher. Matt Harrison is 13-6 with a 3.17 ERA. He's a lefty and Carl Crawford is the only active member of the Sox to have had much success against him.

The Sox will struggle to score off this guy, so Beckett needs to pitch as well as he's capable of pitching.

Photo Credit:
AP Photo

Thank God It's Football Season

I don't think I've ever been more excited for a football season to start. The cause of my anticipation goes beyond how well the Patriots' off-season went and my eagerness to see them attempt to win Super Bowl #4. With the Bruins' early Stanley Cup exit, the Red Sox being a .500 team, and the sheer boredom that is the Summer Olympics, I welcome the 2012 NFL and college football seasons like a starving man welcomes a steak dinner.

I'm tired of Tim Thomas talk, I'm sick of stories about the Sox' clubhouse issues, I'm fed up with an event that considers badminton a sport but not baseball.

It's fucking football time.

The Patriots are playing the Saints Thursday night and are holding joint practices with them at Training Camp this week. The NFL starts playing real games in less than a month (September 5th, Cowboys vs. Giants), College football starts even sooner (Go OU!) than that (August 30th).

Finally, Bobby Valentine and Ben Cherington will be secondary characters in the part of my brain focused on sports. I'll divert my attention to Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski, Vince Wilfork, and the rest of the Patriots. I'll laugh at the Jets, shuffle my fantasy football roster, argue about the BCS, and do all the things that make football fun the entire week long.

Welcome back, football. We missed you.

Photo Credit:
AP Photo/Steven Senne

Red Sox Can't Beat Twins, Can Beat Rangers

If you could explain why the Red Sox can beat the Rangers with apparent ease, yet fall to the lowly Twins with regularity, you could probably win a Nobel Prize for psychology or a Field's Medal for mathematics. Or both.

Aaron Cook did a great job to limit the Rangers to 6 hits and a run in 7 innings. And the offense took advantage of Yu Darvish's frequently hanging pitches to put a few crooked numbers up on the board.

I don't think there's any magic or mystery to the Sox' inconsistency. Last night was a rare example of the offense, the starting pitching, and the bullpen all doing their job. That's happened maybe 10 times this season. No more. Most of the time one element of the team undermines the other. And the end result is a 50/50 chance in winning a game.

This team is one strong winning streak away from claiming a Wild Card spot. And one losing streak away from being out of the race.

It seems weird to me that in Boston the perceived value of a Wild Card has increased, while the actual value of it has significantly decreased.

A Wild Card used to get you the 4th seed in the playoffs. Now it grants you access to the one-and-done play-in game. And if you win that, then you're the 4th seed in the playoffs. So the value of a Wild Card has diminished significantly, but as a goal for Red Sox fans/owners, it has risen in prominence.

Photo Credit:
AP Photo

Who Does Josh Beckett Remind You Of?

I know I'm a few days late discussing Josh Beckett's recent back spasms. I'm sorry for that.

What I'm not at all sorry about is how happy I was that he was booed after taking himself out of a game Tuesday night. While I'm sure the injury is legitimate, I have little sympathy for someone with such a low threshold of pain, and absolutely no sympathy for an athlete that doesn't take care of himself.

I can't figure out who Beckett reminds me of more. J.D. Drew, or his boyhood hero Roger Clemens.

Drew had no tolerance for physical discomfort. And neither does Beckett. For Beckett to operate at 100%, it seems like everything needs to be perfect. His back, his blisters, his lats, the wind, the weather, the crowd noise, the pre-game meal, the golf game he played two days earlier. He can't pitch well if just one little thing is off. He's a diva.

The great athletes are able to summon greatness when not in peak physical or mental condition. Michael Jordan with the flu, Pedro Martinez in Game 5 of the '99 ALDS, even Brett Favre the day after his father died.

I'm not asking or expecting Beckett to throw a perfect game with a strained muscle in his back. But it would be nice if he were able to pitch well even when feeling uncomfortable or in pain. Or just try to pitch at all. He seems more willing to leave a baseball game early than cancel a golf game.

He'd rather sit out then push through. Which is very J.D. Drew of him.

At least Drew was in shape, though. Beckett isn't. And this is how he is like his idol, Mr. Roger Clemens. As Clemens' career in Boston progressed, he added some Texas Toast to his body. His waist grew, his ERA grew, his innings decreased. That's very similar to Beckett. Beckett is 32 now, the same age Clemens was in the middle of his plumping and slumping.

I wonder if Ben Cherington will say that Beckett is in the "twilight" of his career. Then Josh will wind up with the Blue Jays, miraculously get in shape, throw 496.2 innings in 2 years, and win a pair of Cy Youngs.

In some ways, Beckett is worse than Clemens. The Red Sox Front Office battled Roger Clemens. Now, the Front Office enables Beckett. This lack of control over Beckett makes him a more dangerous monster.

Beckett is the guy more worried about finding the identity of last year's "snitch" than making the playoffs.

Beckett is the guy who golfed while injured, then instead of explaining that he was approved to do so, quoted how many days off he had and that it was nobody's business how he spent them.

Beckett is the guy leading Jon Lester and Clay Buchholz astray.

And the Front Office refuses to rein him in. They fired Francona and kept Beckett. But Valentine hasn't been a disciplinarian at all and doesn't seem to have support from the Front Office to be one. Most recently, the Sox allegedly had a chance to get rid of Beckett and send him back to Texas. They chose to keep him.

The Red Sox actually seem afraid to drop Beckett. Getting rid of him would be the same as waving a white flag for the 2012 season. That's true, but it would also give the green flag for the Sox to win in 2013 and beyond. Cherington didn't have the power to pull the trigger. Lucchino doesn't have the stones to sacrifice this mediocre season and look to win in 2013. And John Henry is probably looking to buy an Aussie Rules Football team.

Beckett is a perfect storm of jackassery. He doesn't stay in shape, he's a detriment to team morale, he's a bad influence on younger players, and he's soft (literally and figuratively).

If Roger Clemens, J.D. Drew, and a used douchebag could have a child, they would name it Josh Beckett.

Red Sox Can't Support Lester

The Red Sox are back to .500 again, thanks to even more inconsistency. This time it was the offense who failed to support the starting pitching. Not to mention a bullpen that failed to keep the game close in the end.

All season long one unit of the Red Sox has slumped while the other have done well. The SPs make Quality Starts but get no run support. Then the lineup tears things up, but the bullpen blows the game or the starter goes 4 innings. This team undermines itself.

If everything clicked at once, this could be something more than a .500 team. But why expect those planets to align when they haven't yet for 106 games?

On the bright side, Lester had a very Lester-like start. 8 innings, 3 runs, 7 hits, 0 walks, 7 strikeouts. Not amazing, but very very good. This type of start was his bread and butter from 2008 to 2011. And it's refreshing to see him back to form.

Give credit to Samuel Deduno, who struggled in his first 2 starts of the season but has settled into a groove in his last 3. He's 3-0 with a 0.93 ERA in those starts. The Red Sox aren't the only team he's done well against.

At the same time, the Sox were 2-hit by the Twinkies. They should be ashamed.

Word to the wise, don't invest hope in this team. They'll go on 4 game win streaks, they'll look like they've turned a corner, but it's all a tease.

Felix Doubront faces Brian Duensing tonight. Doubront continues to be a solid part of the rotation. Duensing has spent most of his season as a reliever, and not a particularly good one. The Red Sox have no excuse to lose tonight.

Photo Credit:
AP Photo

Red Sox Make Small Moves on Deadline Day

On Monday I wrote that I didn't want the Sox to be buyers or sellers on Deadline Day. I wanted them to do nothing. That's essentially what they did.

They traded Matt Albers and Scott Podsednik to the Diamondbacks for Craig Breslow. Albers was a righty, Breslow is a lefty. Breslow's pitched in 40 games this year for Arizona and has a respectable 2.70 ERA and 1.18 WHIP. You may remember him from 2006 when he made 13 appearances for the Sox.

The Sox also traded Lars Anderson to Cleveland for Steven Wright. Here's a highlight video:

He's actually a minor league knuckle-ball pitcher. He's 27 years old, and is 9-6 with a 2.49 ERA in AA Akron this year. He hasn't had much success in the minors. But he hasn't been a failure either.

A very dull Deadline Day for the Sox. I'm glad they didn't give up any young talent. They have a chance to make the playoffs this year, but they're not Championship contenders. And if they do win, it will be because of the players they have, not any additional pieces.