Final Score: Boston Red Sox 2, Detroit Tigers 1Always good to start a double header with a win, especially with a tough-as-nails victory like this one:
JT Killer: 7 innings of pure dream death, dancing around four hits and four runs to surrender a single run. The man who loves double headers gave Boston exactly what they needed on the mound on double header day: a whole pile of innings that saved the bullpen for tonight.
Okajima: what's the only thing better than having a kick-ass closer? Having a kick-ass closer and a kick-ass setup man. It's always a rush to watch this bullpen work during a close game, but this game was over after Tavarez left to start the eighth.
Papelbon: the man, the myth, the legend. Nearly struck out the side on filthy stuff that turned the lower-middle of the Detroit order into mush, like a reprise of his appearance in Texas at the start of the year. I'm so pumped after watching him pitch I have to resist the urge to jump up and start pacing off excess energy.
The only problem with today's start: where was the offense? Don Orsillo mentioned during the NESN broadcast that Julian Tavarez has the lowest run support of any of the Red Sox starters (yes, even worse than Wakefield), which lead me - of course - to do some research. Where had all the runs gone?
Today was Julian's seventh start, which already puts him at a disadvantage - he's got fewer games to get runs than the rest of the staff. In addition, Tavarez has pitched less per game than the other four Boston starters; the average number of innings for Schilling, Beckett, Matsuzaka and Wakefield is 52 (or a very healthy six and two-thirds per game), while Tavarez has 37 total innings, or an average of five and a third per game, again reducing the opportunities for runs scored by his offense.
While Tavarez is pitching, his offense has scored him fourteen runs, or two per start. The other pitchers are getting much higher than that - somewhere around five (I'm not going to do the counting on 32 other game logs, but it's definitely higher than two) and the difference is more than an inning and a third of additional pitching could account for, so that theory is out, at least in part - the Red Sox really do score fewer runs when Tavarez is pitching. However, look at the Sox faced during these starts: Johan Santana once, Roy Halladay twice, Kevin Millwood (not great, but the score of four runs matches his ERA of 4.91), Chien-Ming Wang (same deal as Millwood)...not exactly a crop of Sidney Ponsons. Run support isn't an exact science - there's no way to statistically tie offensive and pitching results together - but I'd have to guess that Tavarez's bad luck with getting runs from his own team stems from (in declining order) a.) the pitchers he's faced, b.) his lower inning and start totals and c.) bad luck, statistically quantified.
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