SawxBlog

The Baltimore Flop Redux

George Kottaras congratulates Jonathan Papelbon on save #133. (AP Photo)

This recent trip to Fenway South seemed so promising at its onset, however it was beginning to look more like a disappointment as yesterday afternoon crept into the early evening. The Red Sox entered the 9th inning with zero walks on the day. Dustin Pedroia however quickly turned that around earning the first walk of the day for the Red Sox, as Kevin Youkilis shortly after deposited a two-run HR into the stands, and like that, the Sox were suddenly back in the game. The meat of the order couldn't further convert as Jason Bay (who earned the platinum Golden Sombrero yesterday) and David Ortiz both struck out.

On a side note here, while talking to my Dad about baseball he stated how he's never seen this many Red Sox take so many called third strikes. Of course I disagreed initially here because, well, I am his child and must therefore question everything, but the more I've been watching and thinking about it, I have to agree with him. I don't know if this is a direct result of the modern day ballplayer being more patient at the plate and seeing more pitches per plate appearance, but the hitters seem to be very comfortable now with two strikes. I'm not noticeably seeing them choke up on the bat, close their stance, and swing if it's close, and as my Dad said, Ted Williams would be having a fit if he saw this. I'll be looking into the validity of this more, however keeping an eye open on it, because it's happenig a lot.

So after the back-to-back K's the Sox chances were looking pretty bleak, however with a couple more walks and some magic from the pride of Rhode Island the Sox were able to tie up the game. It only seemed fitting at this point in the series that it'd be Julio Lugo who'd drive in the winning run for the Sox as the weird kept turning. Say what you will about Lugo, but through his entire benching the guy's been a Grade A Professional as he's stayed prepared to play, and has not outwardly complained to the media really about his playing. It can't be easy to be benched in the way he is, and seeing him still come through for us like this is nice to see. Still, what an odd series, and I think some Fenway Loving is more then needed right now. Now about that rain in Boston...

The Baltimore Flop

The Red Sox blew their biggest lead in over two decades last night. (AP Photo)

Watching this game slip like sand through the Sox fingers was as painful as watching a sunburn grow in redness on an unprotected forearm through a salty sunglasses view. Immediately after the "two-out walk-off the field incident" the game took a drastic turn for the bad, and our untouchable bullpen suddenly was fondled at will by the O's, as they ringed out hit-after-hit. I'm not going to dwell too much on this game, however the loss of the game along with Mike Lowell to the DL is helping make the Red Sox appear much less intimidating, and helps bring us back to down to the harsh competitive realities that the AL East presents. It looked like the Sox may have been able to put a decent gap in the division entering the All-Star break, however the continued competition should be expected, and you just hope their fight stays there. Coming into June we were down half a game to the Yanks, and exiteing June we're currentlly 2.5 games up, so all-in-all it's been a great month.

Beckett's the perfect pitcher to have on the mound today though, and while I'm at work, I'll be listening via MLB Audio, and you can follow my thoughts on the game via Twitter here: http://www.twitter.com/sawxblog

Let's Go Sox!

Sign Petition for Red Sox Management to Re-sign Jason Bay

Jason Bay has been everything Red Sox Nation could have hoped for. (SawxBlog Illustration)

Jason Bay's 3 hit, 3 RBI game last night was just another game in a sequence of outstanding performances by Bay, who's turning in nights like this with a ferocious regularity and abandon. By now, we as Red Sox fans fully recognize his value to this team, and with Jason being a free agent coming into this off-season I've decided to create a petition urging Red Sox management to re-sign our slugging left fielder.

Jason is now leading the American League in RBI and only trails Phat Albert by 1 RBI for the MLB lead. Bay's been a strait stud since joining the Red Sox last year, and he seems to thrive playing in the environment of Boston. He put up ridiculous numbers in the post-season last year and has been a key cog to the success of this current incarnation of the Boston Red Sox.

So loyal Red Sox fan, I urge you to sign the below petition, and I ask you to pass it along to friends and family alike so we may make our voices heard. The odds of a deal getting done mid-season are slim, especially when held in the light of how management has handled contracts in the past, still you never know. It's never too early to make a difference.

Sign the Online Petition to get Jason Bay Re-signed with the Boston Red Sox

"We the undersigned wish to express our interest in the Boston Red Sox re-signing left fielder Jason Bay to a contract extension before the 2009 baseball season is concluded. As loyal rooters of the Boston Red Sox we feel that Jason Bay epitomizes everything that a ballplayer should. With a combination of all-out hustle in the field that is coupled together with productive at-bats he has created a seamless transition from which was the tumultuous relationship with former left fielder Manny Ramirez. Jason Bay is a consummate professional on and off of the field and is proving to be one of the more valuable players in the American League. He is revered by the Fenway Faithful and feared by those who oppose the Red Sox. We therefore are asking management to highly consider the resigning of the 30 year old Jason Bay to a multiple year extension."

SawxTalk Episode 1 - Painting Like Van Gogh

In what will be a new installment to SawxBlog, I give you SawxTalk. For SawxTalk you'll be following the office adventures of Charlie and Frank as they talk Red Sox baseball and all things in between. Enjoy!

Video of SawxBlog on Comcast Sportsnet's "The Baseball Show" with Michael Felger

It was pretty neat to briefly be on "The Baseball Show" with Michael Felger this morning, however it would have been even better if they actually had the correct site underneath my name. Comcast Sportsnet Fail there. The bright side to the mistake is that the site they did have underneath my name, Sox and Dawgs, is an awesome site run by a great guy, so you should definitely make it a stop during your Red Sox rounds, especially if the Sox and UCONN sports are your cup of tea. Still, would have been nice to see SawxBlog there, they must be taking the whole The Slowskys thing a little too seriously though. Beggars can't be choosers though, and am still grateful for the opportunity.

Ok, let's hope we get angry Josh Beckett tonight and the drunk D-Lowe. One can hope at least, now, back to that dungeons and dragons game in my Mom's basement.....

Hoping for a Reliable Dice-K is truly Fantasy Baseball

A Tale of two Matsuzaka's between the Team Japan and Boston. (AP Photos)

I was hoping that finally dropping Dice-K from my Fantasy Baseball Team would serve as an offering of sorts to the Baseball Gods. He could be my sacrificial lamb, and once finally freed from the clutches of my evil GM ways, he could truly flourish like the “national treasure” he is. However it now looks like he’s floundering further down that rabbit hole instead, and the natives are beginning to get restless. I did an experiment similar to this earlier this year when Josh Beckett was having (is this really past tense now?) his struggles, and up until now it has worked without much flaw.

Prior to trading Becket for Jason Werth, in what I now consider to maybe be a hasty move, the right hander was 4-2 with a high ERA of 5.08. He was far from the Josh Beckett we’re used to in Boston. The decision was done purely by looking at the numbers, and I completely left my heart out of the equation, which may have been a mistake however I don’t think so. Since trading Beckett on May 27th he has gone 3-1 with an ERA of 4.16, nothing to brag about for sure, but still a definite improvement and I’ll take Red Sox wins over Fantasy ones any day of the week. I considered it a Fantasy Sacrifice Success story.

Now enter the Dice-K, who I also *gulp* had on my staff. I figured I wouldn’t be able to get a sack full of jelly beans for him in a trade, so I mercifully released him to the land of waivers, my sacrifice to the Gods. However after last nights debacle of a game I can obviously see my ethnocentric view of the Baseball Universe is skewed, and the sacrifice was truly a bust. As the boos rained down upon the WBC MVP last night you could clearly see that the tide of Red Sox Nation’s patience has hit a low. And as we know with the ocean, when the tide is low, sometimes ugly things are revealed, and the fans reaction matched the putrid performance Dice-K has given us thus far this year.

The Red Sox have now been backed into a corner as they almost have to do  something with him now. I think that the best case scenario here would be to have him willingly (hah!) go down to Pawtucket to work out what ever demons are chasing him and get them exorcised. Placing him on the DL “just because” solves nothing, and throwing him in our bullpen means we have to partially break-up the best pen in the league, which I’m not too fond of either. Even if he was placed in the pen, he wouldn’t be getting the normal workout he needs there which would be detrimental for the Sox if they have any inkling of bringing him back as a starter.

It’s a perplexing situation, but Dice-K’s always been a shifty character, and even last year when things were going “good” for him you had to watch through nervous eyes. Fantasies aside, the stark reality is that he just plain sucks this year, and I’m just hoping his pride doesn’t get in the way of the Red Sox needs, time will tell though, as his interesting chapter takes a new low turn.

SawxBlog to be on Comcast Sportsnet & WEEI's "The Baseball Show" Tomorrow Morning

SawxBlog to be on the Baseball Show tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow morning I'll be on Comcast Sportsnet & WEEI's "The Baseball Show" for their Web Sox Nation segment. If you haven't watched the show yet you're totally missing out. The show is simulcast on TV via Comcast and also over the radio by WEEI, and it's a really fun show to watch and listen to. Aside from covering those two mediums, you can also log-on to their website and join the live chat which is always full of good people and banter making "The Baseball Show" a truly unique multimedia experiance.

So if you like baseball, and more specifically the Red Sox, you should definetly make this a part of your Saturday morning ritual. See you on the in the chat rooom on on the air tomorrow!

Click Here to view the Baseball Show Homepage and also to join the chat tomorrow

A Red Sox View Through the Numbers

500
The number of consecutive sellouts there's been at Fenway Park since 2003. This is a number we should all take a second to admire, and to pat ourselves on the back for. Although Fenway isn't the largest park in the world, this still isn't a number to be scoffed at. I know I did my part to help with this streak, however in the end the credit goes to the organization, because without a competitive ball club over all these years, there'd be no streak to speak of.

232
This is the number of games it took Jacoby Ellsbury to to make the first error of his major league career. It wasn't that long ago there was a cult hero roaming the CF grass of Fenway who seemed implacable. That player was Johnny Damon, and while Coco did an OK job in his absence, he never quite lived up to expectations. This is where Jacoby comes into play. He first burst onto the scene in 2007 and almost was named the MVP of the World Series before he was even an official rookie. This is a player with all the tools who's also a perfect face for the franchise. A lot is made of his range and speed out there, however his consistency in making the "routine" plays should be acknowledged as well, especially for such a young player.

100
Brad Penny received his 100th career win last night and also may be making the decision for the Sox to trade him an impossible one to make. The great debate over the past week has been what to do about the Sox pitching because of the surplus of it that we seem to have. If I had my say I'd say we do nothing. People will be going on the DL again at some point, and as we learned shortly after trading away Bronson Arroyo, too much pitching is a myth in this game, and should be talked about as if it's a no hitter. Either way on that, congrats to Brad, a significant accomplishment any way you look at it.

40
The Red hot Sox have now become the first team in the AL to reach the 40 win plateau and have increased their lead in the AL East back to 3 games. The Red Sox are also a league best +66 in run differential and seem to really be cooking on all cylinders right now.

3
Dustin Pedroia, who was in his greatest slump of the season last week, knocked out three clutch hits in the win last night with 3 RBI's to boot. When he's producing at the top of the line-up it makes it a heck of a lot easier for the rest of the team to "move the line". Little guy's quite simply our spark plug. This also may be one of the most underrated moves by Tito so far this season. Since he shook up our lineup placing Dustin up top, the Sox as a team broke out of their mini slump, and have been beating teams with regularity one could get used to.

.213

David Ortiz is slowly but surely creeping his batting average back up after it was just .197 heading into the Yankee series. He looks like a different Papi to me, and his confidence seems to be a commodity again. One of the coolest things I saw in Philly over the weekend was him being the first Sox player to emerge out of the dugout during the rain delay, in a game he wasn't starting. Why? To sign autographs, now that's why he has the great rep he does, and is a true professional ballplayer. Lets see Manny do that.

The Philadelphia Experience - Tales from a Parking Lot

The Philly Phanatic tries to hex Dice-K Saturday. (SawxBlog Photo - D.Hixon)

This past weekend Jeannine and I traveled down I-95 South to to visit some family and to also take in Saturday's Red Sox vs. Phillies game at Citizens Bank Park. This was the first time I've seen the Red Sox play in a park not called Fenway, and it was very cool to see the home nine in their road grey. I honestly didn't know what to anticipate heading into the weekend, however any expectations I had were far surpassed even before the first pitch was tossed. Going to a baseball game in South Philadelphia is much different than attending one in the Fens. Is it a better experience than in Boston you ask? Of course not, I mean nothing is, however different isn't necessarily a bad thing, and this especially holds true when there's hours upon hours of tailgating involved.

We arrived in the parking lot around 1:00pm and immediately went about setting up base camp for the day. Thankfully for us, we were with some trained, tested, and true professionals in the form of the Liuzza Brothers. Jeannine's cousins are lifelong Philly Phans that I instantly connected with last year due to our equal passion for our respective cities and sports teams.

Let me just say that Philly Phans "get it" just as much as Boston fans do. There truly is nothing like sports cities in the Northeast, and the gold standards for the rest of the country is set by Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. The Philly Phans have a crassness to them that isn't really there in Boston, and their fandom seems to carry with it a certain aspect of grittiness that they wear as a badge of honor. While I was assured the friendly fire I was receiving would carry the weight of more vehemence if it were say, a Pats vs. Eagles game, I believe the Philly Phans carried a certain level of respect for the Red Sox fans that were walking about on their turf.

Speaking of football, the last time I experienced a pre-game such as this was in the parking lot of Gillette Stadium. The whole day had a very football feel to it, rain showers and all, and I now believe that tailgating and baseball may very well be a beautiful combination. It would never work in Boston, and I'd never want it be a part of the Fenway experience, but when you're following the Sox on the road it adds a great level of flair to the overall festivity, and can help make a weekend take a surprising turn for the Mardis Gras. There was a copious amount of games being played from bags, washers, flip-cup, beer-pong, and all other forms of Drunken Olympics imaginable. My favorite had to be the drunken whiffle ball challenge that took place right next door to us. The game goes like this:

1. Fill a yellow whiffle bat with one can of beer.
2. Crush the can of beer on the ground so that it's flat.
3. Drink the beer out of the bat while your friends count down the seconds as you chug down the beer from the tiny hole @ the bottom of the bat.
4. After you finish the bat of beer you then have to circle the bat with your forehead. The number of times you must do this is dependent on how many seconds it took you to chug the beer.
5. Now that you're boozed up and dizzy it's time play some baseball. So your friend then pitches the crushed can that filled your now empty bat as you flay like a drunken sailor.
6. If you hit the can every one cheers and you hug your friends with a good mix of high-fives and fist bumps.
7. If you miss the can every one cheers and you hug your friends with a good mix of high-fives and fist bumps.
8. Pure genius, props Philly.

So aside from the visual circus that was unfolding around me (like a kid carry around a 15 pound ball and chain for his bachelor party), I happened to be tailgating with one of Philly's Phinest chefs, Mr. James Liuzza of Dibruno Bros. fame. James is one of the best chefs I've ever been around, and his reputation was solidified even further this glorious Saturday afternoon. James worked at a pace that seemed calm, however the rate and quality with what was being handed to me was perplexing. He started it all off with some Moo Shoo Pork that one could die for, and then moved onto his signature bacon wrapped "Lazer Dawgs" which were named after the 6'5'' monster of a man whom happened to be my partner in bags (we went 3-0). He then made the best Philly Cheese Steak I've ever tasted which instantly started drawing a crowd around his station. It was so good pure strangers started offering him money for a sandwich, and you could tell the good people of Philly recognized a top notch cheese steak, and trust me, Gino's doesn't have jack on James here. Then for the grand finale of the fireworks display which was this smorgasbord of food, James pulled out a clam bake that would make the most ardent of New Englander blush at the perfection it was pulled off with, in a parking lot none the less.

Geez, I think I just made myself hungry again....

So after drinking and eating like a Roman for six plus hours we decided to go into the park and actually watch the game, like I said, tailgating is a win for all. The only bad thing about Citizens Bank Park may very well be its name, for the whole place is absolutely gorgeous. It seems to be perfectly engineered, and everywhere I found myself I was offered stunning views of both the game and city. It seemed so clean and open compared to the glorious cave that's Fenway Park, and much like James cooking, it all just seemed top notch in effort and execution. We had great seats high above home plate, however with a little help from the rain delay we ended up right behind the Red Sox dugout, about eight rows back. The game was obviously a good one for a Sox fan, you've heard about all that already, but the experience was truly great for all fans there, and that's the true sign of a good ballpark and city. Can't wait to go back again.

I've said too much already though, so I'll just let the pictures do the rest of the talking, as they tell a lot.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW ALL PICS FROM GAME

In a Soaked Fenway Park, the Red Sox 2009 Reign Continues Over Yankees

Mark Teixeira wears the face of frustration that's haunted Yankees this season. (AP Photo)

As inclement weather played host to a three game set between the Sox and Yanks, the rain continued a drop pattern that ended up equating to a perfect storm for the home nine. Three games played, three games won. Three series played, three series swept. This most recent victory didn’t just make the Red Sox a dominating 8-0 against their NY foes, but it knocked them strait on their asses and off the high horse they rode into Friendly Fenway on. There no longer is the A-Rod excuse (as we sat Jacoby this entire series), and having their prized number one pitcher lose to the Sox five plus pitcher has to sting deep. The Yanks were the team set out with something to prove, not the Red Sox, and last night was their night to salvage some of that mythic Yankee Pride. While the Sox are “only” two games up on NY in the standings, these games go farther than those statistics concede, and all you have to do is watch the games to realize this.

I recognize that when all is said and done the Yanks will be right there come September; I’m a reasonable man after all. But from my biased perch their overpaid team seems to be one that’s more fraud than fact. With a bullpen doing its best NY Met impersonation and a starting staff that’s living well below expectations, I just don’t see why they’d expect to go very deep. Cranking out questionable bomb after bomb in their new Stadium can only go so far, and you can’t forget the tax on their pitchers throwing in that park as a season wears on. Meanwhile the Red Sox stand on the opposite end of the pitching spectrum with what now seems to be too much pitching. Brad Penny showed a hell of a lot of guts out there last night and he simply wouldn’t bend to the Yanks fearsome lineup. With Smoltz and Clay waiting in the wings Theo Epstein now has what every good GM should have, and that’s options.

The Red Sox head down to Philadelphia (where I’ll be as well at Saturday’s game) and it will be the fourth first place team they face in their last four series (Detroit, Texas, NY, Philly) in what will be a match-up of the last two World Series Champions. Not the easiest of stretches for Boston by any means and all they’ve done in their last 10 games is go 8-2. In conclusion to all this, life just seems pretty damn grand in Red Sox Nation for a few of the following reasons.

• They have the best record in the AL.
• Are sitting alone in first place in the AL East.
• Have the largest run differential in the AL.
• Sport the leagues best bullpen by a mile.
• "Cheeze", "Paint", and "Salad" are now common phrases thanks to the underrated Eck.
• Their starting pitching is really starting to hit their stride with both (yes both) aces leading the way.
• A fallen star in David Ortiz is beginning to burn bright again and has done nothing in '09 to tarnish his "Yankee Killer" status.
• Come July, the majority of their games will be played in Fenway Park.
• In reality, they haven't even hit their stride yet....scary.

So bring on the summer rain or shine, for things are looking awfully bright right now for the Boston Red Sox of 2009.