Uphill Battle
Ryan Sweeney has entertained us so far (Photo by Kelly O'Connor and used with permission)
Last night was fun. A whole lot more fun than watching Jonathan Papelbon get a save on Friday night, that’s for sure. I enjoyed the home runs, I enjoyed Ryan Sweeney getting all fancy in the outfield and I enjoyed Adrian Gonzalez showing the folks at Fox Sports that professional baseball players can pretty much play where they are told to play. (For the love of Pete, the way they were going on about Adrian playing in right field you would have thought that the Red Sox had plucked some kid out of the stands and asked her to play right field for the night.) I do love it when the Red Sox play well on national television, especially the day after they lost. The network’s narrative to talk about all the struggles of the team goes away quickly when the team starts raking. So, yes, I enjoyed that quite a bit.
What I’m not enjoying is the Red Sox still sitting 7.5 games out of first place. It feels the team is stuck in the mud and no matter how well they do one day the next they’re being sucked back into the muck. I’m at the point where I’m going to have to start wishing for injuries on the rest of the American League East because that’ll be the only way to gain any ground. So before I start wishing for the Orioles to all be maimed, I’ll just hope the Red Sox can get on some kind of winning streak…starting yesterday.
I will admit to being a little bit tickled at Baltimore being not only in first place but impressively so. The Tampa Bay Rays, in second place right now, are two games out of first. The Orioles have a record of 27-14 and have won five in a row. Having the Yankees and the Red Sox being at the bottom of the pack while the O’s are at the top must be sweet schadenfreude for the Orioles and their fans…and every team (okay MOST every team) deserves that. Still, the sooner the baseball universe rights itself, the better I will feel as a Red Sox fan. Let’s get working on that, shall we baseball gods?
Today we get Josh Beckett against Cliff Lee. Beckett was hot in his last outing and we’ve see him him home runs in Philadelphia before so I’ve been looking forward to this one. Lee has been the victim of his struggling Phillies team. In his last two appearances his bullpen blew it for him and before that the Phillies only scored three runs total in his first three games. So a struggling Red Sox team might be exactly what he’s looking for.
I’m still having a heck of a time watching this team, regardless of where they are in the standings…I’m not sure what that says about me except maybe that I really enjoy the journey…and this team, while frustrating at times, is giving me a lot of little things to enjoy.
I’m getting a kick out of them too, Cyn. They’ve gone out and picked up/brought up a slew of theoretically undistinguished dudes (Aviles,Sweeney, Ross, Salty, Byrd, Nava, Shoppach, and pretty much the entire bullpen) who just want to play their rear ends off. Middlebrooks has made me think about the Splendid Splinter at times already; it’s been delightful to get a glimpse of such a promising kid. They’re throwing themselves all over the place trying to win. (And I can’t help it, there’s something so peaceful about John Lackey being on the DL :-)
We’re in last place ’cause the starting pitching has been, on average, putrid thus far. We’ve seen signs of life reently, though, and Lester is always lousy in the first couple months of the season. But one worries about Buchholz. One worries about Bard. I’m kinda hoping Daisuke and Cook find their way back upstairs and bring some good stuff with them.
My other hopeful ideation concerns the rest of our DL (with the exception of the aforementioned Lackey). Youk is on his way. Ells may be with us by the all-star break. There may even be a Craw Man sighting down the road :-)
. . . and oh, yeah, that set-up man and closer we picked up this winter. We may actually see Bailey pitch! And the imposter wearing Melancon’s jersey may have been apprehended and replaced by the real thing :-)