Sunday, July 29, 2007

Games 104 and 105: The Fat and the Skinny

Final Scores:

Game 104: Boston Red Sox 12, Tampa Bay Devil Rays 6
Game 105: Boston Red Sox 2, Tampa Bay Devil Rays 5

This was about as weird a weekend as you could have asked for. On Saturday, Jon Lester (who has beaten cancer if you haven’t heard) pitched his second start, gave up 2 solo shots but looked strong for 6 and a third and left the game in line for a win. The 9th rolls around and in comes the Papel-bot… the dominator… the destroyer… the loser?

What the hell happened? How could some nobody like Johnny Gomes get the better of the holy one? Well this only tied it and by using almost every single pitcher they had, the Sox managed to hold out till the 12th when Tampa’s blundering bullpen managed to implode in on itself (they pitched a guy named Ryu, no joke) and the Sox jumped on them with both feet.

Flash forward to Sunday and more strangeness abounds. A classic match-up with Dice K squaring off against Scott Kazmir and the zeros were piling up on both sides. Tampa chased Dice K in the 7th after he gave up a solo shot and then a single and quickly Francona went to Delcarman… and why not? The guy has been hot, he didn’t pitch in the 12 inning affair and he looked primed to stop the bleeding on this one.

Except he sucked.

And I mean SUCKED! Add 4 more runs to that solo shot and MDC put this game out of reach. Manny and Youk (who both swung hot bats all series) put the Sox on the board with late inning back to back blasts…but it wasn’t enough to repair the damage.

Whatever happened to our pitching superiority? If the Sox want to maintain this level of winning (11-7 since the break) they need to have the great bullpen that’s carried them this far. No more “whoops, sorry guys” from our stoppers. Besides, if they can hold it together themselves it might stop these Eric Gagne rumors… ugh…