I spent the best weather night of 2005 in the front row of the green monster seats at Fenway Park for an excellent game, the type you can easily recall years later because of the principals involved. In the summer of 2003, I was fortunate enough to take in a classic pitcher’s duel at Dodger Stadium between Mark Prior and Kevin Brown with the difference in the game, a Cubs win, being two Sammy Sosa home runs. Prior, Sosa, Brown. Well last night, Roy Halladay peppered the strike zone all game long, and the Sox were only able to get a lead because of two monstrous home runs off the bat of David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez. They surrendered that lead because of a home run by Vernon Wells in the eighth and a dreadful performance from Keith Foulke in the ninth. Halladay, Ortiz, Ramirez, Wells, Foulke.

The Red Sox fan in me didn’t much enjoy the result but the baseball fan in me enjoyed a hell of a game with a hell of a view on a hell of a night with three of the nicest and most enjoyable people I know, my girlfriend Johanna and our friends Chris and Holly, who were kind enough to extend the invite. The Sox lost a game they certainly could have won but not a game they really should have won. When your opponent hits .375/.526 (OB/SLG) and you only hit .235/.375, no matter how late in the game you have a lead, you can’t really say you were the better team.

The entire Run Prevention unit for the Blue Jays was magnificent. I have had the pleasure of sitting just a couple of rows behind home plate for a Roy Halladay start and let me tell you, he just pounds the strike zone all night. He is 6’6” and throws a hard, heavy fastball that rides in on a right-handed batter and darts away from a lefty. Halladay is efficient in that he knows that the action on his fastball is such that even mistakes won’t cost him that much most of the time. The end result is that you get innings like the 4th from time to time in which Halladay threw just 3 pitches. Through 6 innings he had thrown just 59 total. Of course a hurler can’t conserve as Halladay did last night without some fantastic glove-work behind him. In that very same 4th, Trot Nixon led the inning off with a line drive single into right field. Manny Ramirez followed with a two-hop shot down the third baseline, only to have Corey Koskie lay out for it, throw accurately to Orlando Hudson to cut down Nixon for one, who in turn threw out Manny by a step at first base. You may not see a prettier 5-4-3 all year long.

The offensive stars on the night were the four home run hitters. Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz hit home runs that cleared their respective Fenway walls by a combined 250 feet. I am not kidding. Manny’s home run in the first inning was still on its ascent as it cleared the monster, a good 80 feet over my head as it sailed by. Ortiz hit his home run a good 20 rows up into the stands in the deepest part of right field. Not to be outdone, Corey Koskie and Vernon Wells hit home runs of their own, shorter in length but of the very same currency.

After the Red Sox took a 3-1 lead in the seventh inning, Terry Francona made two curious decisions, both of which I commented upon at the time. Kevin Millar was plunked on the right arm and subsequently lifted in favor of Dave McCarty. Also, Jay Payton replaced Manny Ramirez to start the ninth inning. As Payton and not Manny Ramirez trotted right at us to begin the eighth, I explained to Johanna that the likelihood that the Jays would tie the game up because of inferior left field defense was not as great as the likelihood that they would just score two runs by simply earning two runs. Sure enough, 5 pitches into the eighth from Alan Embree, the game was tied, Jay Payton was Boston’s #3 hitter and Dave McCarty its #5. I can’t exactly get my arms around when you should and shouldn’t use defensive replacements. I’m inclined to believe that in a close game, you should only make defensive replacements when the offensive downgrade is relatively negligible. That way, if the game goes long, you still have a strong lineup intact. You can replace your sluggers with a larger lead, say 4 or 5 runs, so as to guard against the kind of gaffe that plagued Giants outfielder Jason Ellison last week at the Dodgers home opener. He muffed a routine single into a game-winning, bases-clearing triple. That’s my very rough defensive replacement modus operandi, I guess. Defensive replacements only make sense in a close game when the offensive downgrade is relatively negligible.

The Red Sox would threaten in the eighth and ninth but failed to score each time. Meanwhile, after hanging 2 runs on Alan Embree in the eighth inning, the Blue Jays got to Keith Foulke, who looked awful. Toronto parlayed a hit batsman, a walk and two singles into the go-ahead run but not before Jay Payton cut down the potential go-ahead run one play before the eventual game-winning single. Some will say this play justified the managerial move and showed why the decision to replace Ramirez with Payton made sense. This position ignores, however, that Payton came up in a tie game in the eighth with men on 1st and 3rd and two outs, only to pop up the first and only pitch he saw all night. What a spot that would have been for Ramirez, or any team’s #3 hitter for that matter (save Alex Sanchez and Tike Redman). Miguel Batista, not without his own share of drama, shut the door in the ninth for the save.

The Red Sox head to Baltimore to play the first place Orioles at Camden Yards tonight. David Wells squares off against Bruce Chen, who has been lights out thus far in 2005.

Edit: Tony Mazz reports that Manny hurt his quad and that’s why he was lifted. So that absolves Tito here but it’s an interesting topic nonetheless. When are defensive replacements appropriate?