Beaneater

Post #13 is a good summary. In other news, the entire AL East won today. The Orioles and Devil Rays even beat good teams (Twins and Chi-Sox, respectively). Not sure what that means, but it's a nice factoid.

Oh, and before I forget, it's notable that Oakland actually outscored us in the earned runs category. NINE unearned runs - that is truly pathetic (and props to the Sox' batters who took advantage of the extra outs).

Yeah, has anyone else noticed that Damon is doing pretty well right now?

Re: M's pitcher Putz. Oh, well, that makes it a lot better . Here's something that took place in the bottom of the 10th in the Yankees game. With a runner on first and no one out... R.Cano grounded into fielder's choice, left fielder C.Thomas to second baseman K.Ginter, R.Cano to first, T.Martinez out. [Copied from SI's website.] Can anyone tell me what happened here? How the heck does the LF throw someone out at second? Is Martinez really that slow? Did anyone see it?

Strangest thing to happen yet tonight - Embree just had a 1-2-3 inning! Clement: 7.0 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 0 ER. Daaaaaaang. Our pitchers are getting uppity recently. In other news, a guy named Putz is pitching for the M's. I know that it's stupid to make fun of somebody because of their name. I have a pretty silly last name myself, but as I recall I was born with it and it pretty much stuck. But you have to admit that the last name Putz is pretty bad.

This game is turning into a rather vicious beatdown. 7-0 after 4. (I'd prefer 7-0 after 8, though). In other news, the Mariners' DH is batting .188. That seems indicative of some rather serious problems, no?

To answer my own question, yes. Yes, it would.

I'll take the blame for the HR if I can also take credit for 8 IP, 3 H, 1 R . Daaaaaaang, that was awesome. Oh, and we won, too (thanks Papi!).

Dang! I knew it! I'm setting myself up to be the heel of the talksox world!

No-no through 6. Now we just need to start hitting a little ourselves.

No-hitter through 5, though I'm sure I'm not supposed to mention that. Feels pretty cool to quote myself, too.

Bronson looks pretty dang good through 3. Anybody know why Rent got started at SS and then yanked before his first at-bat? Did he get injured or something?

It feels strange to say, "Thank goodness we've got Arroyo back on the mound." But there it is. In other thoughts, wouldn't it be a beautiful thing if both the Yanks and the Rays were 11-18 after today? I'm not sure NYY fans could handle being tied for last.

Winning is nice. We're now in 2nd place in the East (percentage points ahead of Toronto). 2nd place is not where we want to be of course, but it's not terrible for now. With Schilling, Miller, and Wells back, we'll look pretty good. (Just don't take Arroyo out of the rotation, OK, Tito?) We'll look even better when our 3-4-5 batters aren't all hovering around .250. Yanks are 7.5 games out of first. Yes, it's early, and yes, they will probably shape up (or buy some talent). All that means is that we should gloat even more now, while we can.

Yanks just lost. I know, the standings tell me that I should have been rooting for the Yanks to beat Toronto, but I can't bring myself to do that. Were any of you rooting for NYY as you should logically have been? /crickets/ I didn't think so.

Why isn't Renteria batting 9th... ..or 10th?

2 singles, a walk, and three more singles to start off the 8th. Nice. I think Youk is making a bid for a starting position - 3 for 4, two singles and a double, 2 RBI.

OK, just did a little stat-diving. Bellhorn:1610 career AB's and 544 career K's = 33.8% K's in his career. Youk: 210 career AB's and 46 career K's = 21.9% K's in his career. Just for kicks I looked up Vazquez, too. He's got a career .342 slugging average, so I think that's all we need to say about him. (Youk's is .414; Bellhorn's is .410. Youk's OPS is .785. Bellhorn's is .763, so they're not all that different there.). Bellhorn has pop, but so does Youk. I'm sure all of you realize this, but I'll say it anyway. Bellhorn strikes out more than 1 out of every 3 AB's over his whole career. Just let that sink in. Youk doesn't have enough career AB's to make any sort of sweeping judgments, but that in itself is a good thing -- he can get better (his BB/K ratio shows that he's already pretty competent with the bat, and he can develop more power as he goes [hopefully without 'roids]). But Bellhorn is as good as he's ever going to get. As far as Youk at 2B goes, I think of him as being a little immobile for a 2B, no? But I guess it's worth a try. How is Youk defensively at 3B - I've never heard anything about that. If Youk can play a passable 3B and Mueller can play 2B, I think we've got a winning combo. That makes our infield seem a little bit more potent.

I just noticed this. Pretty good idea if you ask me. Youk has got to be better than Vasquez at the plate, and (though I don't, as usual, alas, have the stats) I would imagine that he's a step up from Bellhorn, too. As long as Billy is comfortable playing 2B, this seems like a great move. Any thoughts from those more stat-oriented than me?

Yes. It's a no-brainer.

Nice! Wasdin pitching is roughly the equivalent of Wakefield... ...throwing just fastballs.

You're right, SuperManny, that the idea of "homegrown-ness" is a very fuzzy (if not totally undefinable) one in baseball. And I guess my gripe is not about the lack of homegrown talent; it's the "let's sign the current superstar" mentality that defines the Yankees and (maybe I'm hallucinating here) is starting to rub off on us. For instance, (though I have absolutely no stats at my fingertips to back this up) Renteria was not the best SS on the free agent market. That would be Orlando Cabrera. But Renteria is the bigger name and so he gets the nod (or at least that's how it looks to me). But as I said, I don't even have any facts to back that up. The only thing I have is a vague sense of unease when I look at teams like the Rangers who have a lot of guys that aren't MLB's biggest names but who are already studs and will be seriously bad news in a couple of years (Texeira, Young, Blalock, etc.). OK, last thing. You mentioned the Slocumb for DLowe/Tek trade as an example of the deficiency of the term "homegrown". Good point. In that vein, here's a question that I honestly don't know the answer to: do we ever trade for prospects these days? Do we ever pick up guys who aren't Major League material yet but show a lot of promise? I don't keep up at all with the farm teams, so I don't know. But it seems important to look beyond just today's need.

I was at this game. Yes, it was a serious stinker. To say that we got three hits is being quite generous. After Johnny's leadoff hit, the two remaining 'hits' both bounced off the Rangers' right fielder's glove and could just as easily have been scored errors as hits. Well, I guess Millar's triple would have been a pretty spectacular grab, so on the whole it was closer to a hit than an error, but you get the point: we got one hit all night that actually evaded all the fielders' gloves. Pathetic. There was a great Sox fan-base there, though -- at least as much Sox paraphernalia as Rangers stuff. When things were looking good for us (4th-5th inning), there was a nice cheer of "Here we go, Red Sox, here we go!" which is quite heartening when you're playing an away game. Wakefield looked great through 5, but obviously ran into trouble in the 6th. Park was outstanding, though. Our $10 million shortstop didn't impress. He looked clueless at the plate (of course, so did everyone else), and at one point he made a Little League style matador attempt to get a ground ball. It was like he was thinking, "Ooooh, that was hit hard. I don't want to get in front of that. I'll just stick my glove out and hope I get lucky." [Disclaimer: I haven't had many screaming one-hop grounders hit at me in a while, so maybe it's harder than it looks ] That batter came around to score, of course. Is something wrong with Bellhorn, or was he just resting? I'm as tired as everyone else of Bellhorn's monster K totals, but at least he swings the bat. Vasquez struck out looking his last two times up. We may as well have had Punky Brewster up there batting. All in all, a lousy game. The batting was worse than pathetic, the fielding was not great, and the relief pitching was lousy. The only bright spot is that Wakefield was absolutely mowing them down for the first half of the game. He pitched better than his line would indicate. It's probably waaaaay too early to say this, but is anyone else starting to get the feeling that the Sox and the Yankees are dinosaurs? The Rangers, for example, have an outstanding _young_ infield, while we just throw money at the biggest available name in the off-season (cough, Renteria, cough, cough) regardless of whether he's actually worth anything. [End of pessimistic rant.]

Works for me. I give all the credit in the world to Schilling for the Sox' success last year, but I only get to see the Sox play about once every two years on average, and right now Wake gives me a better chance to see a victory than Schill. Chan Ho Park is starting for Texas, and he's having a pretty good year, IIRC. Should be a good pitching matchup. But more of that on the game thread two days from now.

Today's game is going to be a rain-out? Does that mean (with no game Thursday, unless I'm mistaken, which I could very well be) that Wakefield will be on the mound Friday? I have a vested interest since I'm going to Friday's game.