Strong Pitching, Weak Hitting for the Sox

Well, the Opening Day excitement has worn off and I am not longer excited about the Sox out of pure joy for the start of baseball season. After allowing the Royals to win on the Sox’s perfectly-manicured turf while the Sox avoided base hits like the plague, I’m back to being objective.

The great news is that Gavin Floyd is the same Gavin Floyd from last year. The bad news is that the Sox offense is still the same Sox offense from last year. After 9 painful innings, and just 3 hits, the Sox finally admitted defeat, losing 2-0 to the Royals. The Royals’ little pitcher guy might look young, and he might be young, but he’s pretty darn good. That or the Sox had another case of the UnWise Leadoff Man or something clever along those lines.

The truth is that to the dismay of the booing crowd, Wise is still something like 0-for-8 with 4 K’s. This is like the Minnesota series of last year all over again. In the meantime, there were a total of 13 K’s handed out by our team, 9 of which belonged to Gavin Floyd. That, to me, is pretty impressive. Equally great were Matt Thornton and Scott Linebrink’s performances today.

And from the good to the bizarre, more erratic pitches were thrown today. After Buehrle hit two yesterday, Carlos Quentin’s head was almost taken off before being pummeled by a ball “just below the Q” at the hand of Greinke. What is it with these two teams and the constant desire to pummel each other?