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Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul of Red Sox fans
By adamg on Sun, 09/25/2011 - 11:58pm
The bullpen held it together long enough for Ellsbury to hit another home run and keep the Sox a game in front for the wild card. Sign of things to come, or dead-cat bounce?
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Comments
cats have nine lives
the Yankees shouldn't get too comfortable in the catbird seat
Too comfortable?
They DID just take two out of three in the last series and take that last game to the 14th inning. Besides, if the Sox just win the rest of the way out, it won't matter what the Yanks do.
They don't deserve it Adam
But they may get it.
Nice to see a sign of life from the Sox
...but it's hard to imagine how this team gets past round one of the playoffs with the shape the starting pitching is in. Regardless, I would prefer that they went down fighting like they did last night, instead of playing like the confused, demoralized, inert squad of the past few weeks.
Amazing what we applaud these days
So let me get this straight: We shell out nine figures on two guys in the postseason, are early picks to win it all, are in the driver's seat for two months and picking up a half game on a team with a $40 million salary pool is something to be proud of?
We went into that series with a 2.5-game lead!
I'm sorry, but an extra innings ding off of Scott "Scrap Heap" Proctor doesn't inspire a whole hell of a lot of faith, nor does the fact that Lackey's "best" outing of the season was a 4-4 tie.
I can't listen to the Ellsbury MVP talk today. Not when Justin Verlander is willing the Tigers to the playoffs and not when Jose Bautista made a huge bid to be the Yankees and Sox's next pickup. Ellsbury and the Yanks' Granderson and Cano had great years, but when you have that much talent around you (hello A-Gone) and your team has still only won six games in the last month, there shouldn't be any talk of MVP trophies.
Honestly don't care what happens to the Sox from this point on. When everybody around me is totally stoked that we have a one-game lead in the wild card after putting in minimal effort since summer ended, I'm just fine waiting for a team that warrants higher expectations.
The Blame?
While several things have gone wrong over the past month, a lot of it seems to stem from players pressing due to poor pitching. Everyone wants to blame Tito, Theo, this injury, that broken bat going under Scutaro's legs (and saying he should take a wooden shard to the neck to make that play) etc.
I have heard nothing about the loss of John Farrell - when you are down 4-0 by the second inning of every game and your otherwise reliable set-up man is self imploding - something's going on with the pitching staff that didn't seem to crop up in the last few years.
Why is none of this getting put on the pitching coach - the fish rots from the head is a nice cliche - but sometimes the fish died because something was rotting before the fish died.
Agree, it's entirely about pitching,
which is something that concerned me way back during the off season. The starting rotation lacked depth at the beginning of the season, now it's on life support. I'm not sure this is entirely Young's fault, either. The first two weeks I blamed on him, but by now it should be clear that he doesn't have enough to work with. I love Wakefield, but he, along with Bedard, and Miller have no place in the starting rotation for a team that is meant to contend for the pennant. We got through the Summer on the strength of our offense alone, but at this point, the bats are tired after 4 months of trying harder than should have been necessary.
You look at last night's game, Becket gets in a jam in the 5th, summons all of his strength and ability to get out of it, and should not have then had to pitch the 6th. But our bullpen, which is actually pretty good, is exhausted from six months of backing up mediocre starters. Tito decides to give Becket one more inning, and we pay a price. And the offense can't overcome the pitching at this point, so we are losing almost every game.
95% chance Wednesday is the last game for the year.
It's mental...that's the coach's fault
Check out the stats from Nate Silver. The first half of the article is dedicated to how badly the Sox are collapsing (it's one of the worst collapses in baseball history). The second half investigates why. The pitching (particularly the starters) are completely folding (we all know that). However, if you look at their raw numbers, they should be doing better than they actually are. In other words, when they screw up, they screw up at the worst possible times...they are anti-clutch.
That's a mental breakdown more than a physical one. On average, they're pitching okay...but at the worst possible times, they're choking hard. Only 2 guys can help the entire pitching staff avoid a mental breakdown of this magnitude at the same time...the pitching coach and the head coach. The ONE thing the coaching staff can do the most about is the minds of the players...and it's the minds of the players that has us facing elimination right now.
I seem to recall some Cubs collapses...
... that were even more stunning -- but this is close. Interestingly, Atlanta has following a couse similar (but less extreme) to that of the Red Sox course over in the National League.
Go back to the 5th/6th inning from Monday
Why did Becket have the mental fortitude to handle the 5th but not the 6th? His arm was shot. So yes, there's an element of coaching here -- Francona/Young should have taken Becket out. But given the depleted bullpen, they decided instead to risk another inning from him. I don't know that they made the wrong choice under the circumstances they faced. The problem is that a season of pushing a few guys to make up for massive inadequacy in the others weakens arms. Becket probably could have kept up the fire for another inning 5, 6 weeks ago. But not anymore. His arm is done.
Amazing how tight this really is
I haven't gone back to look at how many one run games there were between the sox and the rays - but think about it - if we had won
two more games v. the rays this thing is tight but over. We can go through the swoon and all the other things but it's amazing that over the course of 162 games, almost 1500 inninngs and close to 500,000 pitches a small handful of well placed swings at any time would have been the difference and that goes double if they had come v. the rays.
Pretty amazing that the Rays can contend with that payroll though - they must have some pretty good heads in that front office. serious hat-tip to Maddon and the organization. I think they are almost dead last in payroll and they are about to make the playoffs for what - the third year in the last four? Imagine what they could do if they had some money...
For that one example
I can think of at least 3 games in the past week where the starter gave up 2+ runs in the first inning. That's not physical weakness. Also, they gave up on Miller too fast as a starter and trusted Weiland too easily to be a starter.
Orioles 6, Sox 3
Somebody just sprayed that thing with feathers that perches in the souls of all Sox fans with a pound of buckshot.