Boston Red Sox 6, Baltimore Orioles 5
Except for the hiccup in the ninth inning (Robin called me before Javier Lopez at last recorded the final out and I asked him if he was hyperventilating), I do so love games against the Orioles. Boston’s playoff hopes may be just games away from complete elimination, the rotation’s success may be pinned on three guys who weren’t even on the radar for starting games in April, the bullpen may be a hit-or-miss affair, one guy might have frickin’ cancer (which still boggles my mind) and Boston might have a terrible record against the Kansas City Royals of all teams, but at least we still have Baltimore. And by God, we better still have Baltimore by the end of this series, or I’ll only have Papi and the 50 home run record to keep me from committing ritual baseball suicide.
You know what we don’t have, though? A consistent Mike Timlin. Tonight the old hunter was responsible for Baltimore’s final four runs, all scored in the ninth inning, mainly as part of a three run blast by Ramon Hernandez. Robin wants me to write an epitaph because, like Fredo, Timlin is dead to him, but the stats, while they don’t show the guy who started out in April (after starting out in March for Team USA), don’t exactly write him off either – four runs in about 11 innings since August 23, with about 1.5 hits surrendered per outing.
Timlin brings another point to mind: as much as I loved the World Baseball Classic, it does seem to have taken a bit out of the players who played in it. I don’t have the statistics in front of me (maybe someone out there has done an analysis already?), but anecdotally it seems like every major league who played for his country this year hit the hard part of the stretch a bit more worn-out than usual. Do the Sox have a healthy Varitek, a sharper Timlin, a Papi without heart problems if those players had not gone WBC? Who knows for sure, but it’s certainly a handy conspiracy theory to hang the hat on.
Tomorrow night, Wake’s back! Coming off the DL for Game 2, Wakefield’s facing Erik Bedard, who’s got the double honor of being the Orioles’ best pitcher and looking absolutely nothing like his player photo. Hopefully Timmy’s issue with no run support vanished with his DL stint and we can look forward to a little win streak. GO SOX!!!
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