Category: Game Recap

Red Sox Drop 5th Straight

Posted on June 14, 2015 in Game Recap

Fenway

A lot of good things happened in this game, but as has been the case for most of 2015 the desired result wasn’t there. Every starter had a hit except for Sandy Leon and Rusney Castillo, but Rusney was squaring the ball up and had a homer taken away by Joey Bats (who now, by the way, follows @AndRighty).

But this team found another way to come up a play or two short of victory. It’s hard for me to be as upset about yesterday as Lefty was about Friday night’s game because I was at the second half of this game, sitting about 8 rows from the field between home plate and the Red Sox dugout with my sister, my brother-in-law, and my baby niece. It was a great day to be at the ballpark.

She loves the Red Sox! #firstsoxgame

A photo posted by Bennett Collen (@stackinpeans) on

That being said, losing another winnable game is frustrating as hell.

Clay Buchholz got the start and put the Red Sox in an early hole, giving up a 3 spot in the top of the second. But the offense would get the Sox back in the game – they went into the 4th inning down 4-0 and came out of it down 4-3, thanks to RBI singles by Xander and Panda, and some Dickey knuckleballs that got past Russell Martin.

Buchholz settled down and turned in a decent outing.

Pitchers IP  H  R ER BB SO HR ERA
Buchholz 6.0 8 4 4 1 7 0 4.22

Papi led off the bottom of the sixth with a solo blast to tie the game at four.

With one out in the bottom of the seventh Pedey, Holt, and Ramirez would hit back-to-back-to-back singles, bringing up Ortiz with the bases loaded. After taking ball one he took a vicious hack at a hittable fastball, trying to give the Red Sox a four run lead with one swing. He missed, and eventually would strike out. Xander would follow and strike out on three pitches. You’d think with one out and needing only one run to take the lead Ortiz would have a different approach, trying only to hit a fly ball or even a single with the first hittable pitch he saw.

That would be the last threat the offense mounted on the day. The Red Sox bullpen pitched well (a day too late), so the game would remain tied up until the 11th inning when Matt Barnes surrendered a solo homerun to Russell Martin. This came a day after Matt Barnes gave up 3 runs without recording an out, opening up the floodgates and letting the Blue Jays back in a game that appeared to be well in hand. To be fair, Barnes had been very good this season up until Friday night, and pitched a scoreless tenth yesterday, but you’d like to see Farrell stay away from him if at all possible the day after such a forgettable performance.

Notes:

-Sandoval left the game with a quad injury and is day-to-day.

–Mookie will miss time after crashing face-first into the wall on Friday night.

-If this isn’t the low point of 2015, we’re in for a long summer.

-I’m still blogging one-handed/with Siri. It’s harder to be interesting, funny, or witty (all three trademarks of Righty’s writing, obviously) with this setup. I’ll try and pick it up for the good of the team. And to impress Joey Bats.

Sox Lose, Sox Lose, Sox Lose…

Posted on June 13, 2015 in Game Recap

Everyone seems to be having a pretty bad time here. (AP Photo)

I mean…come on. Come ON. How is that possible? This team, man. This team. What can you say about a team that refuses to come through? The worst part is that I can’t decide what the truth is about these guys. Is it that the Sox have been unlucky? That they’ve come up a run short in what seems like a dozen games (I’m not going to look up stats for this because I’m writing this from a car, but I actually think that’s probably about right. I could probably look it up on my phone. Whatever). Or is the truth that they’re lucky to even have the record that they have, considering their very poor run differential (minus 51, tied for the worst in the American League).

More and more, I’m inclined to believe it’s the latter. The situations in which the Sox have, time and again, come up short aren’t happening in a vacuum. There’s a reason for repeated failure. It’s not a coincidence. The proof’s in the pudding. And Sox fans got a big helping of pudding last night. Even Don was despondent. He said we might’ve hit bottom. This team will find a way to lose.

[No videos for this one folks. Again, I’m in the car.]

The offense was unimpeachable in this one, as is usually the case with this team. I don’t mean that the offense is usually good, just that one side of the ball usually performs at least halfway decently while the other side decides to take the day off. You can’t blame Joe Kelly for this one – no, he didn’t have his absolute best stuff, but he did enough to expect to get the win, especially having been given eight runs of support .

No, most of the blame lies with Matt Barnes and Junichi Tazawa (much as that pains me to say). I’m gonna go ahead and say that giving up 8 runs without recording an out is an indication of bad pitching. Could it have simply been a case of these guys taking it easy, feeling comfortable with a multi-run lead? Probably. But it’s still embarrassing, and symptomatic of this team’s horrific pattern of losing.

You know what, there’s not much else to say about that side of the ball. The relief pitching was beyond terrible. On the bright side, Tazawa’s ERA remains significantly below 3.00, so this was, hopefully, an aberration on what has otherwise been an excellent year for him.

Let’s move onto the hitting, and compliment some guys that had great days:

  • Blake Swihart, who did a great job of setting the table for the top of the order, going 2-4 with a walk and scoring 3 runs.
  • Rusney Castillo, who went 3-4 with a double and a walk, scored a run and batted a runner in.
  • Xander Bogaerts – 2-4 with a double, and scored a run. Batting from the 3-hole! Finally.
  • David Ortiz – 2-4 with a walk and 2 RBI.
  • Dustin Pedroia, Pablo Sandoval, and Mookie Betts – each of whom only had one hit on the day. But each one was a home run. Pretty, pretty, pretty good.

And let’s shame one man publicly (okay, this blog probably doesn’t count as public. Whatever) who just seems like he’s not going to turn it around:

  • Mike Napoli – 0-5 with three strikeouts, including a huge strikeout (looking on an 0-2 count) with 2 outs and the bases loaded with the Sox down by 4 in the 8th Pretty tough.

I’m done with this thing today. Ugh. I hope Mookie’s okay.

Another Half-Assed (More Like Half-Handed) Blog

Posted on June 12, 2015 in Game Recap
Jones Rounds Third as Sandoval Looks On (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Jones Rounds Third as Sandoval Looks On (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Are we mailing it in less than halfway through the season? Well, no. Your pal Righty broke his left hand. If anything I’m taking this whole “Righty” thing too seriously. I broke it diving headfirst into first base. I was out. Kids, never ever slide headfirst.

My posts will be brief until I figure out a good system for blogging with one hand.

The good news about this game was that the offense scored a halfway respectable amount of runs (5!). They even had some timely hitting including this two-out two-run double by Panda in the top of the 4th, and this two-out RBI single by Xander in the top of the 6th. Papi homered in the top of the 8th (his first in 69 at-bats) and topped it off with a beautiful little bat toss. All three of the aforementioned plays brought the Sox to within one run at the time.

They also played good defense, with the play of the night coming from – who else – Dustin “Sunset” Pedroia. He made a full extension stop on a wicked one hopper from Crush Davis that was practically past him when he snagged it. Bogaerts would get in on the fun later in the game, making a diving stop on a grounder up the middle. I may or may not have predicted that this was coming from Xander (scroll to the notes).

The bad news was that Wade Miley was ineffective. He went just four innings, giving up 5 earned runs on 9 hits, including 3 home runs. Worse still, when Farrell told him between innings that he was done he threw a full-blown temper tantrum, ranting and raving and caterwauling all the way down the tunnel. As Orsillo said on the broadcast, if you’re Miley how can you complain after the outing you just had?

Steven Wright and Taz were effective in relief but the Red Sox could never fully climb out of the hole that Miley put them in.

Notes:

-I have to say, Siri is a pretty good secretary. Dictating this recap wasn’t nearly as painful as I thought it would be.

-Adam Jones is my favorite player in the AL East that’s not on the Red Sox. So good and so likable, a real treat to watch.

Most Half-Assed Blog of the Year

Posted on June 11, 2015 in Game Recap, Random Stuff

These are Skittles.

The Red Sox lost yesterday, 5-2 to the Orioles. I’m gonna give it to you straight here, people. I have neither the time nor the inclination to do a great job on this recap. I watched this game in fits and starts, and it’s just not gonna happen. I can tell you a few things though.

The Red Sox had two extra-base hits: one by Brock Holt in the 3rd inning that knocked in Dustin Pedroia, and one by Pedroia to lead off the 6th. He eventually scored in that inning as well. So Pedey, who’s now hitting an impressive .312, scored both the Sox’ runs. I don’t know what to say about this offense anymore. Just, what a colossal disappointment.

Paying Rick Porcello continues to be a joke of a decision.  I don’t quite understand why it is that he gets off easy and Justin Masterson got roasted.

At least our bullpen is still pretty good. Tommy Layne pitched two-thirds of an inning, and his ERA is still down at 2.41. Ogando is going to be back sub-4.00 pretty soon after going two scoreless innings last night.

This team is now 27-33, 6.5 games back of 1st place in the AL East. Somehow, and this is probably a good thing, it feels like Boston has been a lot worse than that.

Okay, I’m sick of talking about this team. Let’s talk about something else. Like…Starburst. In general, my favorite flavor of candy is orange, but I think orange just might be the worst Starburst flavor. I don’t quite understand the hate for lemon – yesterday at work, there was an open bag of Starburst, and some savage had been stacking the lemon outside the bag because they were unwanted. They’re delicious! I don’t get it. Very lemony.  I don’t usually like cherry-flavored candy at all, but Starburst does it right – I don’t think I’m breaking new ground with that one. The king is obviously strawberry.

It should also be noted that Skittles are forever tainted by switching the green Skittle from lime to green apple. I don’t care how much you like apple-flavoredy candy (I’ll admit I’m already biased against it), it just doesn’t go with the other flavors in the bag. I’ll go so far as to say that it ruins the “eat all the flavors at once” move. The rainbow just doesn’t taste the way it should.