| 03 May 2010
I don't really have much to say here...
After fighting through the Walk For Hunger on the hottest day of the year, in a car with no A/C, to get to Blogapaoolza yesterday, only to watch the Sox get swept by the O's, I fee like a three-toed sloth that got beat up at his own bachelor party and woke up hungover in a cab.
Okay... maybe that's a bit dramatic, but this is my blog, so deal with it.
For over a month now the Red Sox have found new and inventive ways to lose... and it's getting old.
But you all know this, so rather than recap a shitty weekend, I'll leave you with these few thoughts that have been rolling around in my throbbing head:
Johnathan Papelbon is useless after one inning of work. I tried to tell Tito this on April 8th, but I guess he doesn't read my blog...Yesterday, Francona chose to send Paps back out for the 10th after he pitched a semi-clean 9th. The result was a walk to Markakis, an error by Paps and a game winning gap-shot by Wiggington. I know we were running thin on RPs, but the numbers don't lie Tito, Papelbon is Joe Borowski-esque after the first 15 pitches...
Also... don't ask Matsuzaka for more that 5 innings of work. After that, he's a ticking time bomb of suckiness and frustration just waiting to blow up in your face. I don't have the time, nor the energy, to dig up all the info, but I'm sure I'm not along when I say that yesterday's 5th inning meltdown reminded me of the 2008 Dice-K when he averaged 5.5 innings per start and was no longer possessed by the ghost of Harry Houdini.
Wakefield didn't exactly prove that he deserves to be put back in the rotation, but that just gets me going on a completely different tangent:
It's easy to bitch about the struggles of David Ortiz or Tim Wakefield or even Victor Martinez... but I'm starting to wonder if we should be blaming the front office for not being prepared for these issues. It kinda feels like these guys were setup to fail.
Theo admitted that the revolving door fiasco at short stop was a direct result of not being prepared to replace Nomar. So why aren't we harping on him for the same thing with Ortiz and the DH position. Maybe Ortiz convinced the Sox that he could bounce back, but Theo and Co. have the same numbers we have... they should have seen this coming and made other plans. Now Ortiz is stuck trying to climb out a hole while all of Red Sox Nation throws dirt on him.
Same with Victor... the guys was playing 1B/DH for half the season in Cleveland for a reason... he's not a good defensive catcher! I've heard that we have some real good catcher coaches in the system, but Martinez is not a rookie. If he hasn't figured it out by now, he's not going to and we've got 127 games to go.
And asking Wake to work out of the bullpen might be the most obvious example of setting a guy up to fail. I'm 30, and it takes me 20 minutes to limber up enough to play old-man-softball without tearing any muscles... did you really think a 42 year-old pro athlete with almost 3,000 innings on the books was going to be able to jump up and save you when one of the starters gets shelled?
Bottom Line: Things can only go up from here, right? Bring on the Angles!
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