Cheer up, sweepy Jean
BSD and I always bet on the season series between Boston and the Yankees; I think I won last year, but it’s not looking good for ’07 after the Bosox completed a sweep of the Yanks last night. I’m hoping next weekend’s rematch evens things up a bit, but even still, I’m not too bothered by the sweep, because
1. It’s April. Not that the games don’t count, but it’s a little early to start shrieking that someone replaced Rivera’s arm with Folger’s crystals. That fact hasn’t stopped the sporting press from speculating on it, but does anyone besides me remember the 2001 postseason? The man has blown big leads before; it happens. He’s not a bot.
2. Our rotation is…not a rotation. It’s a 23-degree angle at best — Pettitte, Igawa, some guy, some other guy, and the kid who mows Torre’s lawn. “Spahn and Sain and pray for rain” looks like an embarrassment of hard-throwing riches from where Yankee fans are sitting, let me tell you. (And confidential to the “wits” in the pub last night who were ragging on the starter all, “Chase Wright, ladies and gentlemen! Pride of the Yankees!”: first of all, he just gave up four round-trippers in a row, so he’s not exactly unaware that he’s overmatched, and second of all, let’s have Cashman call you up before you’re old enough to drink, send you to Fenway, and see how you do against the Boston line-up. It’s not like we expected him to throw a no-no, so bring it down a notch.)
2b. Yankee-haters with tired material aside, the pitching is so very bad, it’s funny at this point. You have to laugh, because you can’t do anything else, partly, but partly also because, as I’ve said before, the fans can’t get truly creative with the patter unless the team is looking like a church-league nine out there. Which it isn’t, right now, exactly, since to the best of my recollection the Christ Church team could usually put at least two or three players on the field who didn’t have an injury, but you know what I mean.
3. The Yanks got swept, but didn’t quite get their asses kicked. What was the scoring ratio — 21-17, something like that? The Bombers brought their bats; I wouldn’t call it a rout. We just don’t have the starting pitching, and Torre isn’t a smart bullpen manager, and Rivera didn’t have it. A couple of things break the other way, we win one of those games, or two — all things considered, we kept it pretty close. It’s not like Schilling had great stuff the other night, and I haven’t seen enough of Dice-K to make an overarching pronouncement, but the Yankee hitters didn’t seem to have much trouble figuring him out.
4. It’s not like Schilling had great stuff the other night. A-Rod took him yard twice. The pleasure was mine. HATE! HATE SCHILLING!
(But I will say that I kind of like his blog, as a concept. I don’t like to read his blog, because it is written by…him, and…hate, and I suspect that some of his populist routine is just self-aggrandizement, but it’s still pretty neat.)
5. I don’t love watching the Yankees get beat, but it’s a pleasure to watch really good players at work, and every time Ortiz steps up, it’s exciting. He’s just cool-looking, first of all, and even when he’s teeing up a pitcher on the team I root for? He’s teeing the guy up. It’s fun to watch, plain and simple. Papelbon, same thing. I sat down on the bed mid-sheet-change last night and watched the top of the ninth, and I found myself chuckling — say what you want about Jeter, but the guy is a professional who has seen, and hit, some impressive pitching in his career, and he got tied up like a hostage by that 98-mph shit last night. Flailing, completely flailing, and after strike three Jetes walked off like, “Roger that, Jonny.” You don’t see that face very often; it’s a variation on Knuckleball Face, where they’re smiling to themselves a little bit, all, “Well, at least I didn’t strain anything.” Guys used to pull that face after at-bats against Gooden, I remember. “[whoosh] Something to tell the grandkids, I guess.”
6. I got the AFLAC trivia question on Friday night, right away. Knew it immediately; was correct. This never happens; it’s always some late-’60s-Yankees lore that I have to guess on. Thanks, Tris Speaker!
From the other side of the … stadium? Er, from the Red Sox fandom point-of-view, I agree with your take. Don’t get me wrong, a sweep of the Yankees is so delicious I didn’t need to eat breakfast this morning, but I’m not exactly crowing. 7-6, 7-5, 7-6 looks like a tennis match for one thing, and it means we didn’t exactly blow your guys away. We squeaked by with our best pitching against Pettitte and some other guys.
That said, back-to-back-to-back-to-back was pretty damn awesome.
Yeah, while I’m also loving the sweep from up here in Boston, it was hardly a rout. Just some fun to watch baseball.
My HUGE Sox fan manager is just beside himself this morning. It really is pretty disgusting. :-) Being in Florida, we have a LOT of NY transplants, and I think the only thing keeping them kicking his ass is that they don’t want to get fired. As a Tigers fan, I really don’t care one way or another, but I do kinda wish I’d seen the games. God knows our games weren’t much to look at this weekend.
“Torre isn’t a smart bullpen manager.”
That may be the understatement of the century. He actually used Andy in relief last night! That’d be Andy Pettitte who they didn’t re-sign a couple of years back because of his bad elbow. Now surgically repaired (Better…stronger…faster?) he can throw 100+ pitches then 2 days later throw and inning in relief? I think I may be part of the starting rotation by July 1.
Although I may be disowned for saying it, I could have used some extra innings on Friday, since I was at a concert at the Avalon (directly behind Fenway) with a friend who managed to forget where he had parked for EXACTLY long enough for the game to let out and thus waste our 20 minute lead time and guarantee us prime seating in the Fenway Exodus Logjam.
Im a Sox fan myself, and I’m going to be honest here, I think Chase Wright has alot of potential. He clearly got rattled by the first two home runs during the parade, but otherwise pitched alright. He certainly pitched well enough to win with the lineup that New York fields, which is only going to get better when the other 80% of your team gets off the DL. I think he will do nicely as a 4th of 5th starter, but you are right in that Fenway is not the type of place you want to break a kid in.
Also, with regards to Jeter/Papelbon. I remember one of the announcers saying “I think I just saw Jeter saw ‘Wow'”. The kid is electric, its enjoyable just to watch him pitch. His intimidation face is kind of ridiculous though.
Pfft. Try being a Mariners fan.
These two teams haven’t played meaningful games at full-strength since about this time last year. If you’ll recall the sweep in Boston last year, the Sox were reduced to running out starting pitchers named Jason (Johnson) and Kason (Gabbard).
It made for a great Spahn & Sain style slogan: Jason & Kason, and pray that the remaining games are fixed by the Freemasons. Somehow that didn’t work.
Anyway, the point is that a lot of the time it’s better to be healthy than good. It’s not a coincidence that the Sox had no starters get hurt when they won it all in ’04.
Another Soxer here. I remember thinking that the Yankees this weekend looked like the Sox last September, with the feast-or-famine injuries. The Sox did the AA-pitcher thing last year, too, though not at the same time. I was surprised how well your kid did early, but I don’t know if the Sox were holding back at first to see his stuff. The commentators assert stuff like that; I don’t know if it really happens.
I almost wish the two teams could coincide their implosions, to make things more even, but … really, the Yankees seem to have better discipline and would probably win that match, I think. And I’m not quite mature enough to appreciate the beauty of fantastic opposing players performing well. Heh.
I don’t mind having Schilling’s Ws, but yeah, he’s a blowhard jerk. At least he’s not Brendan Donnelly, though. ::shudder::
Also, have you seen the Daisuke Kool-Aid anywhere? I can’t seem to find it. I’m interested in the guy, and given what was paid for him I sure hope he does well, but … I’m not exactly blown away yet. Then again, I guess he is technically a rookie.
As for the April-ness … I’m bugged by those who blow off early games as not mattering at all because in terms of standings, every game has equal weight, but yeah, the whole media frenzy is worse. The Sox media are already the “we lost one game, it’s all over!” types; they don’t need more hype. And we have Dan Shaughnessy, too, speaking of blowhards ….
I’m a Sox fan and I follow Schilling’s blog, but I really only read the game breakdowns because… well, I just don’t give a shit what he has to say about A-Rod as a person, or politics, or Virginia Tech, or God. But you know when the color guy calling the game just really knows his stuff and always has something to say that you never, ever would have heard if you hadn’t happened to be listening to that game? When Schilling talks about pitching, there’s often one of those insights. Say what you want about the guy off the field, dude knows from pitching.
And Ortiz is astounding. Watching him never gets old.
I have to agree with mrh- as a Sox realist (I cannot quite call myself a fan) it was quite discouraging to watch our $100+ million pitcher let as many runs through as he did.
Another Sox fan here. I agree that Wright seems to have some good stuff – he’s just a kid and he will get better. So will Dice K – god willing!
Can someone explain to me why Ortiz’s nickname isn’t “Huggy Bear?” It really should be.
To me, it seems like one of Matsuzaka’s main problems is that he’s caught Tim Wakefield Disease. He can pitch as well as you could possibly expect from him, and the Boston lineup lets him down. It happened in Toronto and it happened when the Mariners were in town. It’s always been a problem for Wake. The guy can be like Phil Niekro out there, but the Sox hitters are going, “What?” It’s sort of frightening that most of Wake’s run support is coming from Doug Mirabelli.
Actually, speaking of Torre as a bullpen manager … what about his management of Wright as a starter? Didn’t he tell the ESPN guys that he pulled the kid after the four consecutive homers so that wouldn’t break him? Wouldn’t the time for that have been either after the second one or well after the fourth one? Maybe I’m crazy, but in that kid’s shoes, I would probably be scarred for life if I gave up four consecutive home runs to “the archenemy” and *then* got pulled, so that I didn’t even have the chance to try to make it up. Unless Wright had any input on that decision, it just seems wrong to me.
Yeah I watched Dice-K pitch against the Jays and he was very impressive, even though he lost. Had our hitters totally fooled except for one inning.
Re: the Boston/NY game, was wondering if those 4x homers were a league record, or if not, when it last occured. Good ole Joe mentioned it was a Boston record but failed to answer my question (huuuge surprise).
Anyone know?
Speaking of the Yanks, hey guys, do you want Shefield back? Because seriously, you can have him. We don’t mind.
AR: it’s happened before. I have three of the other 4x games nailed down, but I don’t know what the other one is.
July 31, 1963, Angels at Indians: Woodie Held, Pedro Ramos, Tito Francona, Larry Brown off Paul Foytack
May 2, 1964, Twins at KC Athletics: Tony Oliva, Bob Allison, Jimmie Hall off Dan Pfister; Harmon Killebrew off Vern Handrahan
September 18, 2006, Padres at Dodgers: Jeff Kent, JD Drew off Jon Adkins; Russell Martin, Marlon Anderson off Trevor Hoffman
The Twins/KC game was the last time it happened in the AL until last night.
Yanks fan. Can I just say Wordy McWordword to the SchillingHate? I was at the taping of the celebrity Jeopardy he appeared on last year and the guy was a total tool and a moron to boot.
And, no, FloridaErin. You get Shef, he’s your problem now. Sorry.
I’d like to see people please calm down about A-Rod being on a pace to hit a bazillion home runs by the end of the season. I think they were quoteing 126 or so as of today. That being said, even though I’m a huge Sox fan I think A-Rod is great, super-fun to watch and I wouldn’t mind seeing a fantastic player (and he seems like a decent guy too) like him striking (ha!) a cheating ass like Barry Bonds off of the record books. I think the Sox pitchers, and pitchers everywhere for that matter, are scared to death of him right now, for good reason. Especially Mr. Tool himself, Schilling. As someone else put it before, “more jogging, less blogging,” please.
And “Huggy Bear” Ortiz is the absolute best. I was at the Saturday game and enjoyed seeing his menacing scowl while he was batting. Man he hits that ball hard. If I were a pitcher and I had to face him, I’d be ROLLING the damn ball into home plate. Take your base, sir.
Papelbon is also great to watch. Every time I’ve seen him get the call, he gives the cop by the bullpen a fist knock as he leaves the bullpen to enter the game. Awesome. Then he throws nothing but heat…
Anyway, a disjointed ramble, but it’ll be a great season, especially when the Yanks are all healthy again and we can both field our best players!
At the corner of 43rd and 6th this morning, I heard a group of guys put forth the theory that every pitcher in baseball is serving A-Rod fat pitches on purpose because of “the Bonds thing.” I don’t know whether they meant that Rodriguez is supposed to pass Bonds on the all-time list eventually as a result of this, or if they just want him to pull news-cycle focus off of Juicy Juice, but as conspiracy theories go, it’s quite an enjoyable one.
Karen- Dang. Well, it was worth a try. :-)
We saw him hit in a few training games down here and we were all “Cool, this may actually work out for us!” and now, we’re just sitting scratching our heads all “We . . . wanted him? Really?”.
word mcwordy mcword. I watched Hank Aaron come up to the mike on Jackie Robinson day and thought what a shame it will be to have his record broken by a chump like Bonds. (Sars: totally borrowing that ‘Juicy Juice’ thing. Love it!)
I’m not a Yanks fan and I don’t have any real feeling about A-Rod, but I’d take him over Bonds any day. Love that conspiracy theory!
Well I do find it rather odd they’re still pitching to A-Rod, even though the season is young and all…just saying.
Hee, even my die hard Yankee hater friend hopes whatever A-Rod does this season overshadows Bonds. This from a guy who barely talked to me for a week when I said I had no reason to hate the Yankees!
Which I don’t, I’m new to baseball and a Cubs fan. I don’t hate anyone yet.
Even though I do love the baseball, I’m not sure I love the baseball in April. It’s hard to get in the swing when it’s still 30 degrees out.
But this was just a great weekend all around – the weather was spectacular, the games were fun to watch, and everywhere you looked people were talking baseball. I was in line at the supermarket and two grannies were just laughing about A-Rod pouting at the plate. Hee. I love this awful town.
I wish all the pitchers would get together and decide that they’re going to walk Bonds every time he comes to the plate. It’d serve his junkie ass right. Now it’d be extra fun if they decided to HIT him every time, but that could get messy.
And Sheffield actually hit the ball once or twice this week… things are looking up. One of the FSN Detroit commentators said he’s walked more often than he strikes out, which is ridiculous if it’s true, but hell, I’ll take it.
I listened to yesterday’s Detroit game and, if Sheffield wants to keep stealing third freakin’ base, then maybe he’ll earn his keep yet. Maybe, I said. Granted, we still lost, but it was a heck of a baseball game.
God, I hate living outside of my market. XM helps, but it just isn’t the same as watching.
Ortiz’ nickname should be Cookie Monster. There is no other pro athlete/muppet resemblance anywhere near as strong.
Just catching up on some good reading and had to give kudos on the Monkees reference.