Red Sox 27-17 May 19, 2013

Been gone for a long time.  The job, and getting a lot of reading and writing done.  But I've been watching (or listening to) most of the games.  Missed maybe 3 or 4 all year so far, maybe.  Here's what's been going through my head about the Sox, and about baseball in general, lately:

--The new one-game Wild Card playoff format is unbelievably bad, I've realized, and here's why.  Imagine you're the Red Sox, for example, and you win the Wild Card over the next team, the Tigers, by, let's say, five games, which is a lot for a Wild Card lead.  Anyway, since the top-2 Wild Card teams play in the one-game playoff, the Sox, who won by five games, play the Tigers.  The Tigers, of course, pitch Justin Verlander, possibly the one best pitcher in the majors.  He strikes out 12 and wins a complete game shutout, and the Sox are out of the playoffs.  Is that fair?  The format exists this year not to make it more interesting for the top two teams, but to make it more interesting for the middle-level teams, three or four of which will finish between one to three games away from the second spot.  Soon it'll be like hockey or basketball, where almost every team is in, or close to, the playoffs.  This is better for the owners, of course, but not for the game itself.

--Pedro Ciriaco isn't doing it for me this year.  After today's game, he's committed six errors in extremely limited playing time, and is hitting below the Mendoza line.  This is a far cry from last year, when he hit (it seems) about .300 and played great defense.  Right now, he's a glorified pinch-runner.  What happened?

--John Lackey is 2-4 with a 3.30 ERA.  And he's slim.  And he's not complaining.  Finally.  Not bad for $15.25 million per year for the past three years, including this one.

--Speaking of money, David Ortiz has made over $112 million (mostly for the Sox) over his career to, essentially, swing a bat.  And for the Sox, and even for Boston itself, he's been worth every cent--if anyone can be worth that much to swing a bat and to represent sport in a major city.

--Lester and Buchholz are finally pitching like they should--at the same time.

--Hanrahan never did it for me, anyway.  But Bailey can't spend any more time on the DL, especially when you consider last year.  If he does any more, you can't consider him a good signing.

--Uehara is amusing.

--I've probably said it before, but I'll do so again: Minnesota should not have an open-air stadium.  Target Field looks beautiful (and its ground crew is run by the guy who used to do Pawtucket's McCoy Stadium for many years), especially with the tan limestone and cityscape in the distance, but it's a mistake for the Twins to have an open-air stadium.  And without a great team, the novelty of it will wear off, fast.

--Ellsbury has been in a long, very quiet, slump.  (Napoli has, too, but not for as long.)  Currently he's hitting about .250, with an on-base percentage around .300.  That's bad in general, but it's catastrophic for a lead-off hitter.  How about Victorino there, and Ellsbury 2nd, or whatever, to let him get himself on track again?  Bradley may not be the answer next year, but I'm not sure Ellsbury is, either.  I have his autograph, so I want to be wrong, but he's got a lot to prove, since he's a free agent at the end of this year.  If the year ended now, I wouldn't resign him, no matter how much Sox gear he sells for the ladies.  (Yes, the management would take it into consideration when considering his free agency.)

--Pedroia's having a great year.  He's a great hitter almost anywhere in the lineup.  He could hit productively, with a high average and on-base percentage, between the first and the fifth spots in the lineup.  When batting cleanup, which he has the last few years when Ortiz was out, he drove in a lot of runs, too.  An amazing hitter who should have a long and productive decline phase, which shouldn't start for quite awhile yet.

--Saw Cecil Fielder on Tim McCarver's show for a short time, so I looked him up on baseball-reference.com, which I use to look up all players' stats, and the salaries mentioned above.  Anyway, he ate himself out of the major leagues.  His last game was at age 34.  The site mentioned above kindly listed his weight at 230 pounds, which is way off, I assure you.  Even now, he takes up the entire lens of the camera.

--Who're the only two American League batters to lead the league in RBIs for three consecutive years?  Answer: Babe Ruth--and Cecil Fielder.

--Speaking of whom...His son, Prince Fielder, will be making $23 million per year, every year, for the Detroit Tigers, until the year 2020.  By that time, he would've made over $225 million playing baseball.  Prince Fielder is hitting below the Mendoza line in his playoff games.  His playoff batting stats are, to be kind, abysmal.  A-Rod has been much better in the playoffs, despite his reputation otherwise.  Ewwwww......

--Tim McCarver is a terrible broadcaster, by the way.  His enshrinement was a joke.

--Daniel Nava is quietly hitting close to .300, with close to a .400 on-base percentage and close to a .500 slugging percentage.  Unbelievable!  Happy for the guy who hit a grand slam on the first pitch he ever saw in the majors--and hadn't done much since.  He was bought from an independent league team for $1.  Literally.

--To show the opposite, Julio Iglesias, who was hitting about .360 and playing Gold Glove defense for Boston when he was sent down to Pawtucket when Stephen Drew came off the DL, was benched for three games recently by the Pawsox manager due to his bad attitude.  His benching started in about the seventh inning of a game I attended.  He was his typical magician self in the field, but he wasn't running out ground balls, and he must've said the wrong thing at the wrong time to the manager.  This won't get him brought back up anytime soon.  He deserved the chance for his defense alone, but his attitude won't help hide how offensive he can be, if you catch what I'm sayin'.  But he has a major league career, even if he bats ninth for bad teams his whole career, just for his defense alone.  He'll give his teams a few wins a year just with his glove.

--Saw a Twins outfielder make a homerun out of a double for Pedroia when he went after a fly ball, and it bounced off of the heel of his glove and over the outfield wall.  (This should really be a 4-base error, rather than a homerun, but I don't know if the rules allow for such a thing.)  Anyway, I haven't seen that happen since Jose Canseco infamously let a fly ball bounce off his head and over the wall.

--A friend of mine imitates how Jenny Dell seems to point with her chest.  I mentioned that Dell does it better, which didn't help matters.  Jenny Dell seems to be having fun with a thankless job.  And she's definitely grown on me, since I said in the beginning of the year that she's no Heidi Watney. 

Opening Day 2013--Red Sox 8, Yankees 2

Photo: Jackie Bradley, Jr., from nbcsports.com

So I'm going to give this blog another shot.  Hope springs eternal, right?  Gone seems to be the bitterness of last year, in which we had a manager nobody liked (including his own players), players nobody liked (including the manager, and the other players) and a front office that seemed to be a bit distant from the action.  Then came the fire sale trades at the end of the season, and things looked up, except for the players themselves, because by then nobody cared.

In all of that, you have the fact that the players weren't trying at all, despite being paid millions (or, tens of millions, in a few cases), and then when the Jerry Sandusky thing came around, that was it for me, folks.  Maybe I'll see you, maybe I won't.

After that, I tried with some baseball cards--which I liked doing, by the way.  And I liked how I went into the players lives, and delved a bit deeper into their backgrounds, or their issues.  In the meantime, I learned a few things as well.  But then some personal changes happened, and my writing took off, and I didn't have the time anymore.

But now I'm back.  The smoke has cleared, and the dust has settled, and whatever other trite cliches you can think of have happened.  Spring is here.  There's hustle and bustle and excitement and exuberance on this Sox team again--for now, anyway.  But there does seem to be a new attitude, and that's not just the Sox ads on NESN talking there.

So, the game.  Opening game, opening series, and at Yankee Stadium, no less.  True, this Yankees team is essentially their Triple-A team right now, but the Sox still had to face Sabathia.  They've handled him well in the past, sure, but this game wasn't even about facing him, beating the Yankees, or even winning, per se.  It was about the new look, new attitude Sox.  The new face of the team.  That's what I mostly wanted to see.

And I did.  Specifically, here are the notes I took during the game (when I watched it on DVR after returning from an appt.):

--I'm glad I thought ahead enough to get two autographed baseballs from Jackie Bradley, Jr. when he was at Pawtucket Red Sox Hotstove League in January.  One to keep, and one to sell when the time is right.  Already his autograph has sold on ebay for about $50.  After one major league game.

--Lester is noticeably taking less time between pitches.  He needs to do that all year.  He was told to do so the last couple of years, but didn't.  This was a Becket influence, I think, since Josh has a cup of coffee and a sandwich between pitches.

--Lester's keeping the ball down and not feeling, also like Becket does, that he can just blow his fastball by people whenever he wants.  He has to set up his pitches better, which is what he's doing now.

--Seeing what I've just written, I'm noticing how glad I am that Becket's gone.

--Bradley's first AB was brilliant and memorable.  Down quickly 0-2 to Sabathia.  Takes some (very close) pitches for balls that you would expect a player with his limited experience to swing at.  Fouls off some good pitches.  Finally draws a walk after a seven or eight pitch at bat.  This pushes runners to second and third, which is more important than the fact that it loads the bases.  This PA proves John Farrell's point about how impressed he was with Bradley's approach every AB.

--I don't know why Sabathia didn't continue to give him off-speed stuff inside and low.  He was susceptible to those in this AB.

--Iglesias infield hit to short; Bradley safe at second by an eyelash, which extends the inning and scores the run.  Speed on both counts, Bradley safe at second and Iglesias fast enough to not even draw a throw to first.  I like it!

--Ellsbury hard hit to first, throw home for one out rather than to second and back to first for a possible double-play.  Youkillis knew that with Ellsbury running, the DP wouldn't happen.  Again, speed.  Iglesias now on second and Bradley at third.

--Victorino singles in both speedy runners with a hard hit single.  I was wrong to question batting him second.  I forgot about his solid production the last few years, and I forgot about his Gold Gloves.  My bad.

--Pedroia singles in speedy Ellsbury.  With Bradley batting eighth, Iglesias ninth, Ellsbury first and Victorino second (and maybe even Pedroia third), the Sox have five consecutive above-average to speedy runners.  That's very nice.

--Napoli, who'd looked silly in his first AB, just (and I mean just) gets under one and skies to deep center to end the second inning.

--Good show here in the second, with lots of walks, speedy running, and clutch-hitting.  You can do a lot of things with walks and singles.  This is how the Sox won titles in 2004 and 2007.  This needs to happen every game, all year, in order for them to have a chance.

--Bradley's great catch on Cano's (don'tcha know) drive in the 4th.  He took an odd-looking route to it, but it's a results-oriented business, as Orsillo says, and he made a great catch.

--Iglesias's push-bunt single in the fourth.  He needs to do that much more often.  Every time he hits it in the air, he owes me twenty push-ups.

--That's a line from Major League, by the way.  That one was for you, big guy.  (Because Bunky's already taken.)

--I love Jonny Gomes, the second straight Jonny the Sox got from the Oakland A's who's an under-rated table-setter, run-producer and all-around making-it-happen kind of guy.  You don't see a two-run infield single too often.  I won't be surprised if the players talk more about Gomes's hustle than they do Bradley's play in this game.

--Bullpen is doing a good job, but we knew heading into the season-opener that the bullpen was actually going to be a major plus for this team.  That, by itself, is unusual for Boston, even for the World Series winning teams.

--There's so much talk about Bradley right now, it seems like Sox fans have him already ticketed for the Hall of Fame.  And he doesn't even have a hit yet.

--Great start for what hopefully is a new-look, new-attitude team.  They should at least be fun to watch, on tv and at Fenway.  I go to my first Fenway game on April 12th.

Long Time, No See

Things have been going so well that I didn't want to blog for awhile, for fear of breaking the flow.  But I'm now reasonably convinced they can continue their winning ways, without superstition, so here it goes:

--It's not the RISP that matters, but the pitching.  While no team can win any playoffs with RISP stats as bad as the Sox's have been, the fact remains that lousy RISP stats won't sink you overall.  But pitching will.  The Sox started off 2-10 because their starters were the worst in the majors at the time, and their relievers weren't much better.  Then the starters came around, became the best in the majors, and now the Sox are 1/2 out of first.  It's not brain surgery: Get good pitching, especially from your starters, and the wins will come.

--And you don't have to be Bill James to say that they're winning more because they're hitting and pitching better.  Sometimes baseball can be whittled down to "Well, duh."

--The Sox's RISP stats still aren't great, even with last night's inflated score.  For now it doesn't matter.  Notice that even while the Sox have been winning, the boxscore shows that they're still showing RISP numbers like 2-11 and 3-12.  A few days ago they won by one run and still left 14 or 15 on base.  That needs to change in the playoffs, but they can get by with that for now.

--Give the Sox credit for addressing the problems fast and giving the players a reality check at the same time.  Or, it's a good thing that Dice-K and Lackey got hurt when they did, if you know what I'm sayin'.

--Ditto for Wheeler and Jenks.  Gentlemen, this is your wake-up call.  Or, it's a coincidence that Dice-K, Lackey, Wheeler and Jenks all go on the DL at about the same time, and the Sox go 22-10.

--I'm old enough to remember when the Sox would trudge out the same ineffective pitchers time and time again, just because of their hefty (for the time) salaries.  Those days are long gone.  Let's remember how lucky (or spoiled) we are that our local team has the finances to shrug its shoulders when multi-year contracts and millions of dollars don't work out.  The Sox have no financial problem with Dice-K, Wheeler or Jenks, all of whom are still signed for a few years for many millions.  Most MLB teams cannot afford this attitude.

--I could say the same for Cameron and Drew too, by the way.

--A Sox announcer recently said that the Sox consider Dice-K a huge bust, a mistake.  He wasn't, guys.  He might be now, but he helped the Sox get to, and win, many World Series and playoff games since 2007.  Same with Okie-Dokie.  Or, name a middle reliever since 2005 to make the All-star game in his first year with an ERA hovering around 1.00.  It's one thing for the average fan to have a short memory, quite another for the serious fan and industry professional to do the same. 

--And Drew somehow fits in with this mindset, too.  The night before last he made a play in right that most do not make.  It involved nothing more than getting a great jump on the ball, but he makes it look effortless out there most of the time.  He glides.  It's arguable about whether he was worth the post-Trot money, but let the record show that after he signed that contract, players have stumbled over themselves to play here.  That wasn't always the case.

--I'm reminded of the Steve Avery example, back in the day.  Near the end of the (lousy) season, both for Avery and for the team, he was due to make a scheduled start and the Sox brass wanted to start someone else in that meaningless game.  Why?  Because that one more start would kick in an incentive worth lots of coin, and Avery wasn't coming back anyway.  The manager at the time (Grady Little?) had to convince the brass to let him start, and the reason he gave was that future free agents wouldn't sign because they'd think the brass was cheap.  They would've been right--it was.  Avery pitched at least 7 shutout innings that day, if I remember right.  And Duquette, who didn't own the purse strings but always acted like he did, said something snarky about the Sox paying him a lot more if he'd always pitched like that.

--The point being that the Sox don't think twice about that kind of thing anymore.  Their customer relations and employee relations post-Duquette are among the best in baseball.  They treat their players well financially--with the caveat being that they'll hit the DL if they're not performing.  The players don't seem to have a problem with that.

--It's an ironic statement that no ownership in my baseball fandom has been as business-focused as these Sox, and yet the players love playing here, and the brass is great to them.  The Yawkeys and the Duquettes were also very business-focused, but in a worse way, and the players either hated them, or didn't come to Boston to play to begin with.  Or, do you think Crawford would've come to Boston in the 80s or 90s?  Even for $120+ million?

--The Sox have to be wondering what they can get now for Lars Anderson.  Answer: Not much.  Ditto for Michael Bowden, who seems to have self-destructed his career after that game last year, when he gave up 10 or so runs in about 3 seconds.  He should've turned out better.  At a quick glance, I see that his fastball is straight, and gets hit, and he can't get his off-speed stuff over.  That's a bad combination.

--The Oliver Stone in me thinks the Sox disabled Scutaro so they could look at Iglesias and Sutton.  And don't think it's escaped their attention--or Scutaro's--that they have played much better in his absence.  I suspect that Drew has more value, and Scutaro less value, than is visible by the naked eye (or boxscore).  I think Drew saves a fraction of a run per game in the field and Scutaro maybe costs them a fraction of a run.  I have no evidence to support this--and I'm not Bill James enough to look at their range stats, or whatever is the equivalent these days--but I've been watching games since 1984 or so, and I think I see what I think I see, if you know what I mean.

--Put another way, the Sox are a numbers organization, and they keep putting Drew in right despite his very average (or below-average) hitting stats for his position, and they're not in a hurry to get Scutaro off the DL.  Which is to say that they already knew what I've just realized in the last few days, and they've already acted upon it.  That's why they get paid the big bucks--and let's not forget that Bill James still works for them.  I suspect that Bill James has more weight about Drew's playing time than does Drew's contract.  Or Drew.