*blink blink* Did that really happen last night? Honestly, if I hadn’t been there to witness the carnage first hand, I never would’ve believed it. I almost think it was worse to experience it in person. I felt… violated.

To properly recap this game would take more pages than you’re probably willing to read so I’m going to make it simple. Basically every inning but the fourth had some action. Some of the action made me feel incredibly happy and some of the action made me want to jump onto the field and stab every member of the team — starting with those who did NOT attend Johnny Pesky’s funeral (yes, I’m still hung up on that and I’m sure I will be fore the rest of the season… at least.)

First Inning:
Angels fail to score. Red Sox score one.
SCORE: 1-0 Sox

Second Inning:
Angels fail to score again. Franklin Morales seems to have his stuff. Red Sox score five capped by a three-run dinger by Dustin Pedroia! OH MA GAHD! *happy dance*
SCORE: 6-0 Sox

Third Inning:
Angels score eight runs. Yes, eight. A lot of bad shit happened. The Angels sent 13 men to the plate. Morales forgot how to pitch, he walked in runs. There was a fielding error, a lot of hits and a stolen base. Clayton Mortensen replaced Morales. He sucked too. Junichi Tazawa replaced Mortensen and finally got them out of the inning. It was bad. The whole inning was such a blur to me since I couldn’t see the field too well through my angry eyes. Red Sox failed to score.
SCORE: 8-6 Angels

Fourth Inning:
No scoring. Holy crap.
SCORE: 8-6 Angels

Fifth Inning:
Mark Melancon replaced Tazawa, holds Angels scoreless. Red Sox score one run.
SCORE: 8-7 Angels

Sixth Inning:
Angels fail to score again. Red Sox score two on a Mike Aviles home run and a couple of doubles by Pedro Ciriaco (who went 4-6) and Jacoby Ellsbury (who went 3-6).
SCORE: 9-8 Sox

Seventh Inning:
Andrew Bailey replaced Melancon. Angels score one on a Mike Trout RBI single to tie it up. Red Sox fail to score.
SCORE: 9-9

Eighth Inning:
Angels fail to score. Red Sox score two runs on four singles by Scott Podsednik, Ciriaco, Ellsbury and Dustin Pedroia (who went 4-6).
SCORE: 11-9 Sox

Ninth Inning:
Alfredo Aceves came in for the save…and blew it. Vernon Wells hit a questionable homer but no one bothered to wake Bobby Valentine up to challenge it. The other two runs came on three singles, a walk and an error. Red Sox came back with one of their own on a Cody Ross homer in the bottom of the inning to tie it back up.
SCORE: 12-12

Tenth Inning:
Aceves came back out. WTF? And he immediately gave up a go ahead home run to Kendrys Morales. Craig Breslow replaced Aceves and the Angels score another on a single and a double by Vernon Wells. Red Sox come back with one in the bottom of the inning, but it’s a too little, too late.
FINAL SCORE: 14-13 Angels

Between the two teams, this game saw a total of 27 runs, 38 hits, 21 strike outs and five home runs. The game lasted a painful 4 hours and 34 minutes. Here’s the link to another frustrating night of Red Sox baseball. The KC Royals come in tonight at 7:10pm for the first game of a four-game series. Jon Lester tries to win his third straight as he takes on Bruce Chen.

Here’s a (not so) fun fact: The Sox broke a 170 game streak last night. This is the FIRST TIME since May of 1970 they lost a game after scoring 13 runs. (Stat courtesy of Gordon Edes’ Twitter feed.) Just goes to show you what kind of season this has been. And now add into the mix the bad mojo of not attending Johnny Pesky’s funeral as a united team and they’ll be lucky if they don’t just vanish from the standings all together. That’s sort of what I’m hoping happens.

Rest in peace, Mr. Pesky… (Photo by me.)

I’m not going to bore you with yet another account of how the Red Sox lost AGAIN… or how Clay Buchholz, who has been pretty much lights out lately, had one of his worse outings of the season. If you would like to torture yourself with this information, I’m sure this box score will be quite helpful. I actually was lucky enough to not have had to sit through another painful display from a team who obviously just doesn’t give a shit. So guess what? I don’t give a shit either. I went to see Def Leppard, Poison and Lita Ford last night — much less infuriating.

So instead, I’m going to tell the tale of how this 2012 Red Sox team has managed to disappoint me more than they have in a very long time. Maybe ever. Sure… last September was a major disappointment. I mean who doesn’t get frustrated with a team who throws in the towel with a month left to the season to eat fried chicken and get fat in the clubhouse? And yes, there have been other seasons where our hopes and dreams have been dashed — but most times, it’s not for lack of trying.

But this one takes the cake.

Johnny Pesky’s funeral was this past Monday in Swampscott, Massachusetts. According to Google Maps, Swampscott is approximately a half hour from Boston. The Red Sox organization provided busses to transport players and personel to the funeral services for a man who spent over 60 years with the Red Sox organization in some capacity or another. A man who just about everyone who goes to work at Fenway Park everyday loved dearly. So that would be what — three hours or so out of your day? This was an off day for the Red Sox, who had arrived home in the wee hours of the morning from a long, unsuccessful road trip.

Do you want to know how many current Red Sox players decided to don a crisp black suit and hop on the bus to honor an old friend?

Four.

Four players attended Mr. Pesky’s funeral.

I know…

Those four — David Ortiz, Clay Buchholz, Vicente Padilla and Jarrod Saltalamacchia — will be the only players I will not shoot death rays out of my eyeballs at the next time I’m at Fenway Park. Everyone else is fair game. Dustin Pedroia, Jon Lester and Josh Beckett — I’m looking at you bums first, when my death rays will be at their most powerful. Was just wearing the #6 on Tuesday night good enough for you? You should be ashamed.

WEEI’s Dennis and Callahan show interviewed Larry Lucchino this morning and naturally, this was a topic of conversation. According to an article in the Boston Globe, Lucchino did nothing but make excuses for the absent players. Of course he did — you know, they did just get in at 4am that morning from a looooong road trip. The full interview can be heard here:

“There was a tremendous turnout at Johnny Pesky’s funeral,” Lucchino told listeners on WEEI’s Dennis & Callahan show. “We had over a 100 people there in terms of ownership, front office, current players, staff, former players. It was a very impressive turnout. I think the people who knew Johnny best had came to it. Our players will have had a chance on Tuesday night to participate in a ceremony on the field — they all willingly and enthusiastically participated on that date — and then there’s going to be another memorial service. So I think it’s unnecessary to focus on that issue.”

I’m sure the lack of current Sox players was glaringly obvious to those in attendance. It really saddened me when I heard the news this morning. But hey, let’s mow a #6 in the grass behind short stop and call it good.

Tonight, the Red Sox and Angels wrap up this three game series with Franklin Morales trying to salvage at least one game of the series, against CJ Wilson. I’ll be there… eyeball death rays in full force. Don’t be surprised if players start dropping dead on the field.

“Red Sox, why you can’t win? You make me sad.”

This is not what the Red Sox needed tonight. They definitely did not need to come into New York and drop the first game of the series. And they definitely did not need to come into New York and give up five home runs. Nope… that, my friends, isn’t going to win you many games.

I’m not sure if the air was extra thin at Yankee stadium or what tonight but it seemed like balls were flying out the park like crazy. In addition to the five the Bronx Bombers hit out, the Red Sox launched one of their own. See? They’re underachievers. You can’t give up five home runs to your opponent, only hit one in return and expect to win. It’s simple math, people.

Franklin Morales gave up four of the five home runs. I think he might be allergic to pinstripes. This season, he has given up eight total homers to the Yankees. Thankfully they were all solo shots or someone’s ERA might have really skyrocketed. I’m not going to lie, this wasn’t Morales’s best outing.

Nick Swisher led the charge for the Yankees, responsible for two of those round-trippers. And Curtis Granderson and Russell Martin went back-to-back in the second.

The Red Sox had just one burst of offensive brilliance in the third inning when they scored all four of their runs, fueled by a three-run homer by birthday boy, Dustin Pedroia. At the time it gave them a 4-3 lead but we all know that holding a one-run lead for another six innings is pretty difficult against this Yankees line up — even with their recent barrage of injuries.

And once again, I am just completely confoooosed by anything Bobby Valentine says in post game interviews. I keep wondering if maybe I just don’t speak Bobby V and that he makes perfect sense to everyone else. I can’t even listen to him without my head almost exploding.

“Well, other than the home runs, he had pretty good stuff,” said manager Bobby Valentine. “They hit all of his different pitches. It wasn’t any one pitch. Jeter’s ball, I guess, cut a little inside for a pitch that he wanted — I think he wanted to have that go away. But otherwise, he wasn’t that bad. He just wasn’t good enough.”

Click here for the home run derby box score, courtesy of the Red Sox. The two teams meet again today at 4:05pm for a nationally televised game on Fox. Jon Lester, coming off a very strong 12-strikeout performance over the Indians, will face David Phelps. Lester has not had much luck against the Yankees this season — he’s 0-1 with an ERA of 6.97 in two starts.

This entire episode – the July meeting in New York, the text messages from Adrian Gonzalez and Dustin Pedroia, the entire soap opera that is a below-.500 team finding the gall to blame its issues on its manager – has taken an even more bizarre and blatantly uncommunicative turn.  Yesterday, instead of addressing the issues head on, talking straight with the media and the fans, and giving Red Sox Nation any smidgen of hope that ownership had its hands on the wheel of this Titanic, we get this, from Larry Lucchino:

“We are very concerned about a breach of confidence in this matter because in the 10 years we’ve held these meetings, we’ve never had information leak like this.”

Really, Larry?  Your most pressing concern in this matter is that, basically, someone told on you?  That’s the big takeaway here?  Don’t you think that’s a little… out of touch?

Look, Larry, I’m no public relations maven, and I don’t work for the Red Sox.  I’m a lawyer, like you, and I have the same training you have.  I see what you’re trying to do here: group people with opposing viewpoints together behind a common cause, get them all angry at the Other Guy, find the Other Guy, destroy the Other Guy, invite everyone out for a celebratory drink together, revel in newfound satisfaction.

But, this time, it’s utterly transparent.  Nobody cares, really, about who leaked the story of the meeting – it will probably remain a mystery forever, along with what was in those shakes in the Dominican Republic (David Ortiz is on it, and will let you know), the identity of the chicken and beer snitch (Josh Beckett’s on the case, folks!), and why Heidi Watney really left town (I’m going to just leave that one alone).  A lot of internet whodunit commenters think backup catcher Kelly Shoppach spilled the meeting on his way out of town.  Who cares?

Let’s say we learn that the snitch is Kelly Shoppach.  Big deal, it’s Kelly Shoppach.  That doesn’t change the substance of the meeting, and it doesn’t change the obvious rampant discord up and down the Sox organization right now.  It seems to me that it’s far more important to address WHAT was said, than it is to bluster about WHO said it.

And, it’s amazing how quickly the players have toed the company line on this.  Ortiz, one of the last vestiges of 2004, the guy everyone looks to when the team needs a boost, said the following:

I hope it’s not someone on the team. Maybe it’s coming from outside. A lot of this stuff comes from outside, from people who we never see here. It doesn’t come from the reporters who cover the team because they know what’s going on.

Note that Ortiz didn’t address the actual point, either: whether there’s a disconnect between players, management, and the front office, and where in the system the fault lies.  He’s blaming the media – just not the beat writers who play a huge role in forming and maintaining his public image.

And, from Bobby Valentine, the victim in this entire exhausting vortex of doom:

I was thisclose to posting a want ad on Craig’s List to advertise that I was currently in the market for a new favorite team. THISCLOSE. But the Red Sox pulled out a win this afternoon that stymied a sweep by one of the worst teams in the league, and granted them a stay of execution in terms of my fan status. I have this team on tight probation right now so they best watch their step.

Lucky for me, I was making my voyage home from my long weekend in NYC and listening to Joe Castiglione and Dave O’Brien call the game on the radio was just what I needed to make the miles go by faster. And lucky for the Red Sox, they scored some runs and got some decent pitching so I didn’t get the urge to drive my car square into the back of a semi truck.

Franklin Morales made a spot start today in place of an ailing *snicker* Josh Beckett and once again, did a great job. Um, hello? How many great “spot starts” does this guy need to make before the light goes off over someone’s head to put him permanently into the starting rotation. Honestly, Morales could pitch the pants off of Dice K (if he ever gets rid of his crick.) At the end of the day, he allowed just one run on three hits and struck out four in his six inning outing.

“I needed to throw my pitches,” Morales told reporters after the game. “I felt great concentration. I know the team needed to win. I tried to do what I need to do, get the hitters out and do my thing.”

Vicente Padilla provided some late inning, heart attack-inducing scares though. He came in with a 6-1 lead in the ninth to close out the win but couldn’t get the job done. He allowed three runs on a walk and two home runs. Alfredo Aceves had to bail Padilla’s ass out and he was able to (thankfully) earn the save.

The Sox offense belted out six runs on 14 hits to support Morales’ effort today. Every starter except Jarrod Saltalamacchia had a hit. Adrian Gonzalez drove in three runs on two hits and Carl Crawford celebrated his 31st birthday with another three for five day.

Click here to take a gander at the Stacy-is-still-a-fan box score, courtesy of the Red Sox. Aaron Cook will take the hill against Yu Darvish to kick off a three-game series with the AL West-leading Texas Rangers tomorrow night at Fenway Park.

Problem is, I don’t see Ashton anywhere.

Clay Buchholz (Keith Allison, c/o flickr.com)

The Red Sox managed to lose yet another game last night, to the Minnesota Twins.  With the loss, the Sox are – you guessed it – two games under .500.

And what’s weird is, the Sox find different ways to lose every single night.  Last night, for example, Pedro Ciriaco – one of the only Boston players I find it easy to root for this year – hit his first career home run in the eighth inning to put the Sox ahead.  But, literally minutes later, Minnesota’s Joe Mauer hit a three-run bomb over the Monster to give Minnesota the two-run win off of Alfredo Aceves’s blown save.

The blown save and last-minute buckling was a real shame, because Clay Buchholz turned in a really, really good start.  He went seven strong innings, giving up only one run on seven hits, one walk and three strikeouts.  As we’ve discussed more times than we’d like to here on this blog, the Red Sox are sorely lacking in quality starts; when they manage to actually throw one together, the bullpen and the offense need to take advantage of the starting staff’s sudden competence.

John Henry said it very simply: “We just have to play better on the field,” he told the Globe.  “It’s really as simple as that.”

It really IS jut as simple as that.  This team is much better than its record.  Unfortunately, its record is what counts.  It’s frustrating in a way, because it’s hard to pinpoint one or two fixable problems: when Jon Lester and Buchholz put up quality starts, the bullpen rolls over or the offense disappears.  When the offense has a monster day, it seems like the pitching staff puts the ball on a tee for the other team.  The bullpen – which was a strength for a while – has been losing steam as the season comes to an end, and Andrew Bailey’s still not back.

Does anybody have any ideas?  I’m fresh out.  Here’s a link to last night’s deflating box score, courtesy of the Red Sox.  The Sox will try, yet again, to beat one of the worst teams in baseball this afternoon, when Franklin Morales (2-2, 3.32 ERA) takes on Nick Blackburn (4-6, 7.43 ERA).  Morales is filling in for Josh Beckett, who twinged his back during the rain-shortened game earlier this week.

Watching the Red Sox this year, I feel like I know what it’s like to be a hamster: you spend all this time and energy running, sprinting even, on this wheel, to the point of exhaustion.  Once in a while, you’ll get a little bit ahead of gravity and start to run up the side of the wheel a little bit – look, you can see the sky!  Once in a while, you’ll stop for a quick breath and get spun around backwards like you’re on a roller coaster.  And at the end, you look down and, despite all the energy, twists, turns and exertion, you’ve gone absolutely nowhere.  And you live in a clear box covered in sawdust with (at least if you were my childhood hamsters) the constant threat of love from a six-year-old girl hanging over your head (think Lenny from Of Mice and Men), but that’s a different post.

Like, this week.  The Red Sox went every which way, like a hamster on a wheel.  They got a little ahead of the game. they got spun around in a few circles.  They faced down a trading deadline.  They got a little bit lucky.  They got two-hit.

And after all that, they’re still at .500, stuck at the bottom of the wheel with nothing but some sawdust and the faltering Toronto Blue  Jays to keep them company.

We begin on Tuesday night.  The Red Sox, fresh off a pretty quiet trading deadline (the Sox traded for Arizona’s Craig Breslow, a former Sox reliever and former Yalie – this led to some pretty hilarious but moderately unprintable FakePeteGammons tweets about an Eli tandem of Breslow and AAA callup Ryan Lavarnway perfecting their pitching and catching technique), threw Josh Beckett against the powerful Detroit Tigers and Justin Verlander.  Beckett had been the subject of some pretty pervasive trade rumors, so it was poetic, almost that he took the hill that night.

And, Beckett pitched well.  For 2 2/3 innings, that is, before he left the game with back spasms.

Great, right?  He’s not on the DL, but murmurs from the Red Sox higher-ups are that Beckett won’t make his next scheduled start this weekend.  The Red Sox went on to win the rain-shortened game.  The umps called it in the top of sixth inning, when Detroit had the bases loaded with two outs and the go-ahead run at the plate.  Which is probably lucky for the Red Sox, honestly – I don’t see that ending well had the skies not literally opened up and started dumping water everywhere.  Call me crazy, but I don’t have a lot of faith in Boston’s ability to battle back against that situation this year.

Wednesday night, the Sox staked the Tigers to a 6-1 lead by the fifth inning, before battling back to make an exciting game out of an ultimate 7-5 loser.  The Sox ended their four-game win streak, but did manage to take two out of three from the Tigers series.  Aaron Cook really spit the bit on this one – the starting pitcher hasn’t performed well over his last three starts.  Maybe now that Craig Breslow is here to shore up the bullpen, we can explore the Franklin-Morales-in-the-rotation idea again?

Last night was just… pitiful.  There, I said it.  The Sox lost to the Minnesota Twins – the MINNESOTA TWINS – 5-0, and got two-hit along the way.  Minnesota’s Samuel Deduno just absolutely stymied the Sox lineup over six innings, in only his fifth major league start.  The only Red Sox player who could figure him out was Adrian Gonzalez, who notched both hits.  There’s just nothing else to say – it was a frustrating game, and the Sox left very little to show for themselves.  Jon Lester had yet another tough-luck quality start.  Maybe this team just can’t get it together for Lester.  That happens – teams will score bunches of runs for some pitchers (like Clay Buchholz) and then peter out behind some other pitchers – but it’s frustrating to watch.  Lester’s thrown 11 quality starts this year, but he only has five wins.  If anything, given this lineup’s supposed power and consistency on paper, those numbers should be reversed, and the lineup should be able to pick up an occasional bad day by an ace pitcher.  Here, though, it’s like Lester is slaving away in some small-market stadium, putting up good numbers but never getting the run support he needs to actually win a game.

Ugh.  Back at .500, and now it’s August.  Still stuck on the wheel, covered in sawdust.

Felix Doubront (10-5, 4.37 ERA) takes on Brian Duensing (2-6, 4.53 ERA) tonight at Fenway.  The Twins are one of only five teams in the American League with a worse record than the Sox – so maybe we can, I don’t know, beat them?  Or at least, score a run?

See the title to this post?  That’s pretty much the takeaway from last night’s game.  The Red Sox sported some obvious holes in their lineup (most notably, Adrian Gonzalez ceded first base to Mauro Gomez last night – word is that he still doesn’t feel well) but pulled through for a strong win out of the All-Star break gate.  The Sox beat the Tampa Bay Rays 3-1, bringing them (wait for it… wait for it…) one game over .500, and putting them a game ahead of Toronto in the AL East standings.

Welcome back, Jacoby Ellsbury – we missed you. (Keith Allison, c/o flickr.com)

The marquee line on this game was that Jacoby Ellsbury finally made his long-awaited return off the DL, playing in his first game since partially dislocating his shoulder back on April 13.  He flew out to left in his first leadoff at-bat, but finally got on base when he dribbled a seeing-eye ground ball past second base in the seventh inning.  It’s good to have Ellsbury back – even if he doesn’t do much for a while, the simple fact that all Boston’s injured players are starting to make their reappearances will inject some life into this team, and into this fanbase.

Oh, on that note – yesterday team owner Larry Lucchino sent a letter to season ticket holders commiserating with them over the team’s lackluster first half and asking for them to keep the faith for the second haul.  The local news covered the letter this morning, and interviewed some Sox fans.  One of them actually said “it’s always been hard being a Sox fan… they do this to us every year.”  Excuse me?  It’s true that the Red Sox have had more down seasons than up seasons over the course of the last lifetime, but I think that guy missed the point.

The reason this season is excruciating as compared to other seasons, is because this season (and last season, for that matter), the Sox were supposed to be stacked.  Crawford, Gonzalez, Lackey, etc.  The Sox print money these days, and it’s an odd mixture of frustration and, I think, embarassment at continued high-priced free-agent failure that drives this melancholy.  The Red Sox are turning, if they haven’t already, into the early 2000-era Yankees – high paychecks, clubhouse discord, and an inability to back it up on the field.  That embarrasses a lot of Red Sox fans who have constructed a lot of their fan identity on, well, being the martyrs on the white horses, the anti-Yankees.  Must be tough to swallow that they’re quickly becoming them.

Anyway.  David Ortiz and Pedro Ciriaco, whose been playing out of his mind lately (3 for 3, sacrifice, stolen base last night, and 10 for 16 in his last four games) handled all the scoring for the Sox last night.  Papi launched a ball into the right field seats in the first inning to get things started, and then Ciriaco scored Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Ryan Sweeney on a bases-loaded single in the second inning.  From there, Franklin Morales held the Rays scoreless through five, allowing only two hits before giving the ball to Scott Atchison.  Atchison let the Rays score off a Sean Rodriguez double, but that was all the scoring the six total Red Sox pitchers would allow.  My new persona non grata Vicente Padilla picked up his 20th hold (maybe baseball’s too easy for him, and he should pick up a tougher sport that women play, like, oh, roller derby, or my “recreational” Sunday flag football league, which, yikes), and Alfredo Aceves picked up his 20th save.

So, that’s not a bad start to the second half.  Here’s a link to the box score, courtesy of the Red Sox.  Boston takes the field again in Tampa Bay tonight, when Clay Buchholz (8-2, 5.53 ERA) comes off the disabled list from his scary gastrointestinal bleed to face David Price 11-4, 2.82 ERA).

Well Red Sox Nation, yesterday was quite a busy day! Round two of the weekend battle with the NY Yankees took place yesterday afternoon — making up a rainout in April. I’m probably not the only one who wished this game got rained out again.

It was hot and muggy and it appeared to throw Red Sox starter, Franklin Morales, off his game. Similar to Friday night’s first inning, the Yankees jumped out to a quick lead putting up four runs on back-to-back homeruns by Nick Swisher (a 3-run shot) and Andruw Jones.

I looked at my husband (who is a Yankees fan) and said, “Wouldn’t it be funny if the Sox scored four in the bottom of the first?”

He chuckled and said, “Ah…no.” Party pooper.
» Continue reading “Red Sox: Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.”

So, here’s a thought experiment for you: when your starting pitcher, your number two pitcher – let’s call him, say, Josh Beckett – gives up five runs to the Yankees in the top of the first inning what are the chances of then witnessing any kind of close, fun, enjoyable baseball game?

Josh Beckett (Amanda Laws)

Turns out, if you’re talking about a Red Sox-Yankees game, the chances are pretty good.  The Red Sox stormed back against an equally ineffective Hiroki Kuroda in the bottom of the first, and tied the game at five.  A wild first inning kicked off the last series before the All-Star break: Beckett gave up two singles and then hit Alex Rodriguez to load the bases, before walking Derek Jeter home on a Robinson Cano walk, allowing a two-run single to Mark Teixeira, and giving up sacrifice fly balls to Nick Swisher and Eric Chavez.

Phew.  Exhausting!  Good thing Kuroda had a similarly tough time getting outs in the first inning.  He gave up a leadoff double to Daniel Nava, moved him on a wild pitch, and let him score on a Ryan Kalish sacrifice fly.  A David Ortiz single, a Yankee throwing error, and an Adrian Gonzalez double brought the score to 5-2, before Jarrod Saltalamacchia hit his 17th home run of the year to right field, tying the game and marking a new career high.

The first inning took almost 45 minutes, which, well, let’s just say visions of a seven-hour game were running through my head.  This was a Red Sox-Yankees game, after all.

» Continue reading “Red Sox Drop A Wild One, And, The Teixeira-Padilla Chronicles”