When I come into work…one of my daily rituals is to click over to the Boston Globe and read whatever articles they have about the Red Sox. I gotta get my daily fix in…and know what is going on with the boys. My favorite Globe writers are Amalie Benjamin and Pete Abraham. They both always give me great information…and entertain me. If you don’t follow their articles, I’d highly recommend it. Plus, they are both on the twitter.
Well, today…I was reading Amalie’s Notebook article and this quote from Pedey just stuck out for me. It made me chuckle.
It was in those final two games in Toronto, with Clay Buchholz and Jon Lester on the mound, that as Dustin Pedroia put it, “We run-prevented the [heck] of them.
Oh Pedey. This and for a million other reasons…is why I heart you. Love it. I literally lauighed out loud.
My other thoughts on the Red Sox as we are ending the first month of 2010 baseball.
This team was built around pitching and defense. Theo told us so. Well, out of the gates it seems like the pitching and defense did not get the message. Am I worried? No, not really. A lot of the defense are new parts…it’s gonna take them time to learn a new field and each other. So, those frustrating errors…I don’t think they will continue. And let’s not forget that we are without two of our outfielders…which are definitely part of that defense strategy.
Pitching. It goes without saying that the starting pitching has not lived up to the hype as of yet. However, as of late…things are looking up. Clay and Lester are pitching like aces…and Lackey hasn’t been bad. Dice-K is back with the team….and has looked great down there in AAA. Now, we just need Beckett to return to form and I think we have a rotation that can beat any team out there. Plus, how many other teams have enough great pitching that someone like Tim Wakefield can be hanging out in the bullpen? Yeah, didn’t think so.
Our bullpen? I’m not so concerned. I still think we have a pretty decent bullpen. Manny Delcarmen has seemed to have turned a corner and his last few outings have been remarkable. RamRam and Oki still make me nervous, but I know the talent is there. As for Papelbon, I have loved his last 2 outings. He’s had 1-2-3 innings and his fastball has looked tremendous. He was hitting 97 MPH his last time out and the fastball had a lot of movement to it. It reminded me a lot of the Pap we saw in 2007. That’s a good good thing.
And our offense. I have never been someone who called it anemic, but I’m honest enough to admit we have issues. The big issue is Papi. He’s just not hitting. He has hit some doubles as of late and the one HR (which I was in attendance for…whoo hoo), but he’s not what we need for a DH. Plus, JD and VMart have been struggling at the plate as well. However, we have gotten some nice surprises as well. Pedey is just smacking the hell out of the ball….and Tek has become a HR hitting machine. Add in the offensive contribution of the call-up Darnell McDonald. Let’s just say that if our pitching and defense are doing their job…I’m not really concerned about the hitting.
We’ve had an interesting first month…and the month of May will be another interesting test as we are heading up against some tough ballclubs. We play the Angels, the Yankees, the Rays and the Yankees again. I like how we are playing, but we gotta show we can play with the big boys.
Let’s Go Red Sox! Clap Clap ClapClapClap!!!
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