Not a Good Weekend for the Red Sox

 The Red Sox started the weekend 20-8, with the best record in the Majors.  The ended the weekend 20-11, tied with Texas and St. Louis for the best record in the Majors.  The Sox were swept in the 3-game series against the Rangers.  It was the first time this season the Sox had lost 3 games in a row.  Bad, yes.  Horrible, maybe not.

I think this weekend proved to be a wake-up call to the Red Sox.  The Sox have been cruising through the first month of the season, and they’ve relied pretty heavily on their pitching for that.  Yes, the team had been producing (most notably Napoli and Ortiz), but the pitching is really what has made this team the force it’s been this season.

But, this weekend proved that pitching is fragile.  Last week, when Joel Hanrahan came off the disabled list, the question was who would close?  It never became an issue though, as Andrew Bailey is having problems with his biceps.  He’s scheduled for an MRI today.

The Red Sox have used Uehara and Tazawa a total of something like 30 times (sorry, I’m trying to recall what they had said during the game yesterday.  I believe it was 15 times for Uehara and 14 times for Tazawa, before they were used yesterday).  That’s about every other game, which isn’t the smartest thing to do this early in the season.  The Sox, in past seasons, have worn their bullpen down.  It always seems like the teams with well-rested bullpens are the teams that survive into the playoffs.

Middlebrooks needs to get his bat going.  I thought for sure this series against the Rangers would be the series to get him to hit consistently, since he’s from Texas and had many friends and family members show up for the game.  Middlebrooks was 1 for 7 with 3 errors and was benched for Sunday’s game.  I don’t know if it’s the sophomore slump, mental, or mechanical issues.  Middlebrooks needs to get going though.

David Ortiz, however, has continued to keep it rolling.  He is now carrying a 25-game (10 month) hit-streak.  He is hitting .438 with 10 doubles, 6 home runs, and 23 RBIs.  He has reached safely 33-consecutive games, the longest such streak for a Red Sox player since Dustin Pedroia had a 37-consecutive game streak in 2011.

The Sox play the Twins next, at Fenway Park.  As a disclaimer, since I live in the lovely Midwest where all games played against/by the White Sox, Cubs, Royals, Cardinals, Brewers, and Twins are blocked out (figure that one out), I will not be able to actually watch the Twins-Red Sox game tonight.  I will be following on GameDay, however, and hope to see the Sox get out of this slump.

With all the speculation of Clay Buchholz having some foreign substance on himself that he rubs off on the ball when he pitches, it’ll be interesting to see how well he pitches tonight.  Buchholz has been phenomenal this season (6-0, 1.01 ERA); but it’s always appeared in the past that his issues were more mental.  Are these cheating allegations going to get inside his head, or will he continue to cruise?