The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

The Red Sox are on a three-game winning streak heading into to their early (10:05 Central time) game for Patriots Day. Instead of recapping the three games, I thought I would give a few observations and tidbits from what transpired this weekend:

The Good

* The Red Sox are winning, so that’s the main good thing to come out of this weekend.

* Josh Beckett found his groove again. For Fridays game, he went 8 innings pitched, giving up 1 run on 5 hits and 1 walk, while striking out 1.

* The Red Sox owned Tampa Bay in the 8th inning. On Friday, they scored 8 runs, and on Saturday, the scored 5 runs

* The offense really started coming around these three games:

Gonzalez: 5/13 with a double and an RBI

Youkilis: 4/10 with 3 RBIs
Ortiz: 9/13 with a home run, 4 doubles, and 8 RBIs
Ross: 3/10 with 2 home runs, a double and 8 RBIs
Aviles: 5/13 with 2 home runs, a double, and 2 RBIs
Shoppach: 4/7 with 3 doubles, 3 RBIs, and a stolen base (his first attempt in the Majors… ever. It was nic-named “The Stop, Shop, and Roll” on Twitter).

* The bullpen was great (minus Melancon on Friday who gave up a home run):

Morales: 1 IP, 0 hits, 0 BBs, 1K

Atchinson: 1/3 IP, 1 hit, 1 BB, 1K

Padilla: 1 2/3 IP, 1 hit, 0 BBs, 2Ks
Aceves: 2 IP, 0 hits, 0 BBs, 3Ks

 The Bad

* For some reason, Valentine is not playing Sweeney, who, if memory serves me, has not gone a game he’s played without a hit. In the two games he played this weekend, he went 2/7 with 2RBIs.

* As much as I like McDonald, he’s cooled way off since Spring Training. This weekend, he was 1/9 with a double. With Ellsbury out (more on that in The Ugly section), I’m sure we’ll be seeing much more of McDonald.

* While Beckett seemed to have found his groove, Buchholz and Doubront still have some work to do:

Buchholz on Saturday: 7 IP, 6 hits, 5 runs, 3 walks, and 5 strikeouts. (Also worth noting, that while I wasn’t able to watch most of this game, I did check the score in the 3rd inning. It was 5-0 Rays. Luckily for Buchholz, the offense clicked later in the game.)

Doubront on Sunday: 5 IP, 9 hits, 4 runs, 1 walk, 7 strikeouts (Doubront did great until the 5th inning, when he gave up all 4 runs).

 The Ugly

* The Red Sox will be without Ellsbury an estimated 6-8 weeks because he has a subluxed right shoulder. A shoulder subluxation is when the shoulder doesn’t completely become dislocated. I wrote briefly about how the injury occurred on Friday. The word “surgery” hasn’t appeared associated to Ellsbury’s name as of yet, and it could just require rest and rehabbing.

* Valentine is causing controversy with Youkilis. Valentine made the following comment to WHDH’s Sports Xtra show Sunday night:

I don't think he's as physically or emotionally into the game as he has been in the past for some reason. But [on Saturday] it seemed, you know, he's seeing the ball well, got those two walks, got his on-base percentage up higher than his batting average, which is always a good thing, and he'll move on from there.

When Youkilis was asked about the comments this morning, he replied with:

I’m more confused than anything because everyone knows I go out and play the game as hard as I can. It’s just my style of play. I was never blessed with the raw tools and I’ve always had to use playing the game hard and with full effort my whole life.

Valentine stated that he met with Youkilis and offered him a clarification and an apology. For what it’s worth, Youkilis was not in the line-up today for what Valentine called a “groin injury.” When asked about the clarification and apology, Valentine stated:

Kevin came in this morning and I thought it was about his groin. I thought he was going to tell me how his groin was, and I said, `Hey, how’s the groin?’ and he said, 'Well, all right, but what’s going on?'

When he told me that people called him and told him that I said things that he didn’t like, I totally apologized. I said the last thing in the world I want you to think is that I'm doing anything to criticize you. I was giving an answer to a question and I should've been more specific and said your physical was about your swing and your emotional was not being happy when you don't hit a ball off the wall.

I don't know if he accepted my apology, but it was very sincere. The last thing in the world is that I didn't want him to think that this was anything but an answer to a question that seemed to be jabbing at him. I was just trying to smooth it over and I guess that I didn't.

I’m not sure how I want to read into this. I want to think that everything’s going great with the new manager, but it just may not be that way. Pedroia said it best, I think:

I don't know what Bobby's trying to do, but that's not the way we do things here. Maybe that stuff works in Japan.

Ugly indeed.