You now who picked up a win today? Mark Buehrle. You know who didn’t? Blackburn of the Twins! I have to start this with the enormous news that the Twins are officially in 2nd place- again. Oakland is now my 2nd favorite team; first for letting us take away those two wins the past two days, and second, for beating the Twins today. The Sox beat the Mariners 13-5 today, Vazquez was declared A.L. co-player of the week, and Joe Crede is rumored to be starting his rehab assignment (again) tomorrow (Many are saying it may be extended until he gets used to baseball again (for lack of a better word) but I’m counting my chickens early and getting excited to see him in the lineup again). And while I’m on cloud nine today, there are other things to be dealt with.
I’ve noticed that for the past month or so there has been no one I trust on our starting pitching staff. I had put my full trust in Gavy and Buehrle all season, but they’ve been quite shaky lately and I’ve noticed that I start every game and every first inning with dread. Today, I think I was right to worry. Buehrle earned himself 5 runs today. He gave up 11 hits and 2 walks. Some of this wasn’t his fault, because- as Ozzie says- the defense has to be in top form when Buehrle pitches because he’s a ground ball guy, but still! I mean, we got the win, I won’t kick a gift horse in the mouth, but 5 runs are a lot. The Sox will have bad offensive days, too, and they’ll need their pitchers to keep that other team off the board. He had 100 pitches today and 71 of them were strikes, but there were a lot of wasted pitches and lots of those strikes turned into men on base. Coop had to talk to him a couple of times and A.J. looked like he wanted to knee him in the crotch. (I just have to warn you that you’ll be hearing this phrase from me a lot in the immediate future. I apologize in advance.) Was there anyone out there that thought today was a good day for Buehrle?
Carrasco came in the 6th to finish it up and pitched through the 7th. He has really saved our rear this year. (Aside from that first game in Oakland. But that wasn’t his pooch to screw, that was Dotel’s. Bygones.) Seeing as we had an 8-run lead and nothing to lose, Ozzie brought in Horacio Ramirez once again. Somehow, he allowed no runs, but if anyone could’ve tied that game up, it was he. He had some good outs, and then went ahead and allowed four hits over two innings. Maybe I’m spoiled and used to Jenks and good closers, but it was one of the longest ninth innings of my life. I have trust issues with him, is all.
But the good news is that it was another night of offensive bliss. 13 runs crossed home plate on 11 hits and an impressive 6 walks. (Boy, aren’t we glad we didn’t maneuver to get Washburn now?) Once again, the pitchers of the opposing team fell victim to the Homer Brigade. Four home runs (Swish, Ramirez, my little buddy Cabrera (his first since June 19), and of course Quentin) combined to squish any hope of a victory for the Mariners, who had an early 3-0 lead. Dye didn’t homer, but had two doubles, which really amounts to the same thing, so an honorable mention for him. Thome doesn’t seem to be as strong as he was the past few weeks (It seemed like he’d be hitting .270 soon, but is now under .250 again), but he’s not awful, so I won’t freak out just yet, but I have to throw this out there. And right when I was going to scold Swish again for doing some more right-handed batting, he went ahead and homered, so there you go. Swish is at it again. I swear the man has multiple personalities. (At bat, on the field, with his hair… he’s a one-man team. A streaky, kinda bad team…)
I try not to watch the post-game show (I always risk listening to their opinions and taking them as facts), but they promised me Crede news, so they hooked me. Anyway, they threw this stat out there: tomorrow’s starter, Clay Richard (Yup, he’s back. And he better be good, or I’ll go back to calling him Clayton. I don’t think he’d like that. Would you?) is carrying a 9.64 ERA. Kind of a scary number, but he’s pitched a total of… 18 innings, if I was to guesstimate, and I remember being pretty excited about him his first time out, so I’m still holding onto hope that our managers knew what they were doing when they sent Broadway back to Charlotte for him. Then, they threw out this question: “if the Sox make the playoffs, who is your Game One starter?” Buehrle was the poll winner by far, but I think it really comes down to how these boys are pitching for the rest of the season. To me, the strongest is a toss-up between Javi and Danks (My, how far we’ve come…) right now, so we’ll see in time.
More post-game discussions: an interviewer asked ‘does anyone else in baseball have 3 SS playing as well as we do?’ That’s interesting, because we do have 3 short stops covering the infield. Never thought of it that way. But there was something I did think about: during the game, Hawk & DJ were talking about how B.A. is too good to just be the 4th outfielder and how someone’s gonna get him next year and how they think it’ll be the Sox. I hope so, too. What do you think is in B.A.’s future? A trade? A starting role? More of the same? If Thome isn’t signed for another year, and PK (or even Dye) moves to DH, Swish moves to first, Anderson has a real chance of starting (but, of course, there’s Owens). I won’t say he’s the next Carlos Quentin (who was the Diamondback’s untapped talent), but he will at the very least do for another team what Swish has done for ours (minus the one-man show), or perhaps he will be a happy medium between the two.
No comments:
Post a Comment