What a brutal weekend to be a Boston fan. The Red Sox were swept by the Nationals, and the Celtics lost game 7 to the Heat. One quick note on the NBA- I hope that the Thunder can beat the Heat. I cannot stand LeBron James, and the longer he goes without a championship, the better. If he does win a championship, the comparisons to Michael Jordan will never stop.
Okay, thanks for letting me vent for a moment, and back to the Red Sox and their terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad weekend. I watched part of the game Friday night. In about the fourth inning, my XBox lost its signal, so while I was waiting for it to reboot, I switched the game to my iPhone. In that time, the Nationals took a 4-0 lead. I kept GameDay on my iPhone while I watched a movie, but my heart just wasn’t into it.
Saturday was probably worse. I thought Matsuzaka was on a roll, then in typical Matsuzaka-form, he gave up the home run to LaRoche and seemed to unravel. Again, I was keeping track of the game on GameDay as I was at my cousin’s City Championship game for Little League (he won). When I returned home, I was able to watch the last 2-3 innings and thought the Sox had a chance, especially when Saltalamacchia came up with bases-loaded in the 7th to pinch-hit for Shoppach. Salty got 2 RBIs, but it wasn’t enough.
Yesterday, I made a run to Coralville to the Scheel’s store because my brother wanted to get a new Red Sox shirt for the game on Sunday. I checked the score every once in awhile, saw when they were ahead, saw when it was tied, and saw when the Sox lost… in the 9th… thanks to Aceves. Andrew Bailey can not return fast enough, even if he’s never thrown a pitch for the Red Sox this season. Aceves is great as the “every-man” pitcher, meaning he can fill into any role when needed; he hasn’t been good enough as a starter (Spring Training) or a closer (Season) to justify granting him one of those two positions.
Also, the Sox’s bats need to come back out. For perspective, the series this weekend against that Nats, Pedroia was 3 for 13, Gonzalez was 2 for 13, and Youkilis was 0 for 7 and did not play on Sunday. The lead off hitters (Nava and Podsednik) were 4 for 14. That’s not going to cut it if the Sox want to find themselves out of the basement.
The pitching wasn’t horrendous this weekend, but it needs to improve as well. Rich Hill was placed on the disabled list because of pain in his elbow, the elbow he had Tommy John surgery on last season. Not good. So, to replace him, the Sox pull up Mark Melancon; thee of the 45 ERA (or something like that). I know he’s done well in Triple-A, but that’s Triple-A. There’s a reason why those players are not in the Majors yet.
I’m beginning be get very wary about this Red Sox team. They are so deceiving, having been playing great for about two and half weeks and falling off the face of the earth the past week (they won ONE game in that time span). If they do horribly against the Cubs this weekend, we’ll know how the rest of the season will go. The Cubs are currently the second worst team in baseball with a 20-40 record (the Padres are the worst with a 20-41 record). Here’s hoping the Sox can right the ship, find their grove in the pitching and hitting, and start winning some games for a change. They pretty much have to play .600 ball for the rest of the season to finish with a 90-72 record.
UPDATE: As I sit here and post this, the Sox are losing 4-0 in the bottom of the 3rd inning...
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