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Big win last night, bascially telling me to stfu about the offense. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

There is a myth that the Red Sox are built around pitching and defense, and therefore the sacrificing of offense is a-ok. You’ll see this mantra reported in the press, or on popular message boards, or even in bars around New England. Unfortunately, the pitching and defense hasn’t been all that good the last time through the rotation either.

This was on display quite prominently last night down in the City of Tampa (St. Petersburg). The Red Sox committed one error, Mike Lowell’s fifth inning throwing error allowing Ty Wiggenton to reach, but it’s not as though starter Matt Clement was just a victim. In six innings, Clement allowed six free passes and threw a wild pitch. This after a day where Josh Beckett walked five in 3.7 innings and allowed three home runs for the second straight outing, and Wakefield walked four. The starters are not helping themselves at all in the last few games.

But the defense part of the equation isn’t nearly as dire as the offense is in the early going. Currently the Red Sox rank 10th in the American League in runs, 10th in slugging, tied for 10th in home runs, and 10th in batting average. While that shows remarkable consistency, it doesn’t so much help the team win ballgames in the even that the pitching is struggling.

Fortunately for Boston, they are fifth in the AL in on base, which means there is a silver lining to the dark offense crowd. But even then, the Sox are saddled with something that was on glorious display last night…because they aren’t hitting for power, once the guys get on base, they stay there.

Youkilis was on base four times last night. Once he was erased on a FC, but three times he died. Manny reached four times, and had no runs to show for it. The Red Sox had nine walks, two hit batsmen, and four singles. Only once did any of that matter in terms of putting runs on the board, and that was JT Snow’s RBI single in the eighth. With one out, and two runs in, the eighth and then the ninth has become a microcosm for the Red Sox this latter part of April.

There are runners on first and second with one out, and the heart of the order coming up. Loretta continues his 2005 Bellhorn impression (pop outs rather than k’s though, so it’s ok) by grounding out harmlessly to short. The Rays poured some salt in the wound by throwing Cora out at third rather than Loretta out at first. Ortiz then unleashed the Fury of God’s Own Thunder by popping out.

The rallying wasn’t done yet though, heck no. Dan Miceli showed his normal pitching prowess by walking Ramirez and Varitek, and getting hooked by Joe Maddon. Tyler Walker, who had been a Ray for about 25 minutes, immediately steps in and gets Lowell to bounce into a double play. Not one to mess around with God Thunder, Nixon looked terrible on a strike out.

The lack of offense has completely sapped the excitement out of watching the Red Sox. Right now, they just don’t have the ability to win baseball games consistently, due to having pretty good pitching and pretty bad hitting. Once Crisp comes back and Loretta and Varitek start to hit, they’ll be in much better shape. Until then though, there is no telling how many lives will be lost on the basepaths.

There’s not much to this post. Work has been busy and last night’s game wasn’t exactly an incentive to write a thorough and interesting synopsis of the game.

Read the gory details.

If I had to sum it all up? Ben Broussard owns Josh Beckett, small sample size (2 AB) or not.

I have never been able to get too excited over Cliff Lee. If he threw three or four miles per hour harder, had slightly better stuff or was able to hit his spots more easily, I think he could be a fantastic pitcher. For me, he always just looks too ordinary out there - too hittable. Don’t get me wrong, when you have an offense like Cleveland’s, employing a guy that’s a little above average who can give you more than 200 innings is going to help you win games. And if Cliff Lee has suddenly become the pitcher he was last night, he will help Cleveland win a whole slew of games. Last night his stuff was as good as I have seen it and he was able to freely hit his spots. From the pure speculation department, it also looked as though the Indians’ advance team had a superb report planned for him too, as time after time he seemed to make the right strategic pitch in the right situations (more on that in a bit). People will be up in arms here today over Josh Bard’s four passed balls, and yes, it is close to time to address that issue. Maybe some will focus on a lackluster start out of the gate by Tim Wakefield. The story for me, however, was simply that Cliff Lee was magnificent and was the biggest reason that the Tribe was able to win last night’s contest 7-1.

It was clear that Lee was not going to shy away from his fastball right out of the gate. Two heaters away and then one on the inside corner made quick work of Kevin Youkilis in the first. Lee wouln’t allow a base runner until the thrid, when Bard singled and Alex Gonzalez - get this - walked. Youkilis once again came to the plate for what was one of the more fascinating square-offs I have seen this season. Youkilis clearly has a very high baseball IQ, and Lee seems like he really knows what he’s doing out there himself. So after striking Youkilis out with the inside fastball in the first, Lee went right back to it to start Youk off in the third. This time, Youkilis was sitting all over it. The problem, and I suspect Lee knew this, is that Kevin’s swing is not quite as short as it needs to be if he is going to consistently handle the inside pitch. For those unfamiliar with the difference between a swing that is short and one that is not, from the right side contrast Kevin Millar and Manny Ramirez and from the left, Carlos Delgado and Barry Bonds. Ramirez and Bonds clear their hands through the zone quickly enough to position the bat head in a way that they are able to drive inside pitches in fair territory. Millar and Delgado, with their longer, hooking-type swings, pull more foul balls. Youk takes a nice cut but he just has a little improvement in that area that he will need to make. So on this first inside fastball, Youk laced it foul about 320 feet. Unfazed, Lee went right back to the inside heater, only this time it was a little off the plate. One and one. On the third pitch, he painted the black on the inside. One and two. Youkilis watched the next pitch go by for a ball before tapping back to the pitcher. Lee had outsmarted Youkilis, an intelligent hitter in his own right.

After a Mark Loretta walk, Lee would strike Ortiz out on a healthy dose of fastballs - another intelligent plan executed well by Lee. The night before, Papi took southpaw Scott Sauerbeck’s first and only offering, a curve ball, out of the yard. Ortiz is a mature enough hitter at this point so that he is not going to be out in front of a curve ball. Sure you can get him with a good one, but it will be because it was just a damn good pitch, not because you fooled him. Well Lee knows he makes his money spotting a quality fastball and he did not shy away from pumping Ortiz with a succession of them. Ortiz left the bases loaded in the third, and Lee struck him out once again on mostly heat in the sixth.

The Tribe provided all of the offense they needed to in the first. Grady Sizemore singled and stole second. Jason Michaels reached on an infield single and then Jhonny Peralta homered on just an awful pitch from Tim Wakefield, one I wish he would just put away. I am all for experimentation and resourcefulness and to Wakefield’s credit, he has become a more complete pitcher by developing the ability to occasionally spot a fastball or a breaking ball and he even throws his knuckleball a couple of different ways. One way I have noticed him trying to throw it recently that I don’t think works is with some extra velocity. This is the pitch he threw to Peralta. He essentially tried to jam him with a knuckleball that he seemed to throw as hard as he could. The added velocity only served to detract from the knuckleball’s ability to move, however, and Peralta crushed what really amounted to a 76 miles-per-hour fastball on the inner half - not exactly a challenge to a superior MLB hitter. And that was that - with Lee dealing the way he was, the Sox were finished.

On the bright side for Boston, the full potential of their right field platoon was on display last night. Wily Mo Pena homered and later in the game, after Lee had been replaced, Trot Nixon came on and doubled off of Bob Wickman. Also, Pena saw his first action in center field, a move that will probably be panned by the bloviating nitwits around these parts but one that is appropriate nonetheless. Pena is nothing if not a fantastic athlete but he has what some may call “bad radar” in the outfield. Well with his excellent speed and a better look at the ball coming off the bat from straight away, I happen to believe he is better suited for center field. He can see the ball and just go and get it.

Josh Beckett and Paul Byrd this evening in the rubber match.

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I am not sure if you knew this but, um, Delmon Young is crazy. Down in Pawtucket last night, Delmon Young tried to spear the umpire. With his bat. As for actual items of interest from a baseball perspective, Dustin Pedroia and Hee-Seop Choi were each on base twice, Alejandro Machado homered and Jon Lester had another OK outing.

Three things stood out for me in this game.

One, I couldn’t help but think back to a Ken Rosenthal article on Travis Hafner last week after David Ortiz homered on Scott Sauerbeck’s first and only pitch of the evening. Rosenthal correctly notes that Hafner stacks up favorably to Papi, and then gets this quote from Sauerbeck…

“He doesn’t wear jewelry, pimp his home runs and give hugs afterward,” Indians reliever Scott Sauerbeck says. “He hits ‘em, puts his head down and runs. It’s refreshing in this day and age, to say the least.”

Too funny. Jewelry and hugs shall be the downfall of Western Civilization. I wonder if the not-so-thinly veiled shot at Ortiz made its way back to Boston before the Sox arrived in Cleveland. Anyway, it was pretty funny to see Papi knock Sauerbeck out of the game after just one pitch.

The second thing that stood out probably stood out for most others as well. Why in the &^%$ did Curt Schilling stay in the game for 132 pitches? A DL stint can’t be far off.

Finally, a hat tip to Tito is in order for pinch-hitting for Alex Gonzalez to lead off the eighth inning. Problem was of course that he did it with J.T. Snow, when Wily Mo Pena and Dustan Mohr were also avaliable to him. Just inexplicable.

Whatever. It was a nice win against a very good team.

I have no delusions of grandeur with respect to our little site here. We have a tidy little following, one that will allow us to post our 100,000th unique visitor in the next week or so, but nothing too big. That said, we have been getting enough traffic of late so that it would not be out of the realm of possibility that some professionals lay eyes on our work. With that said, here is the beginning of Gerry Callahan’s column in today’s Boston Herald suggesting that - get this - David Ortiz should bunt every time other teams put a shift on.

He could, in theory, hit 1.000, slug 1.000 and get on base 100 percent of the time.

Here’s what I had to say yesterday…

I am confident that he can execute the play, like I said before, 80% of the time. So on plays where the shift is on, David Ortiz can hit at a .800/.800/.800 clip, which is better than his typical .290/.400/.600 line to which we have grown accustomed.

Maybe I was thrown by a well-reasoned thought coming from a mainstream baseball columnist that includes slugging and on-base numbers? Maybe the fact that I don’t particularly care for Callahan’s work is clouding my judgment? Whatever it is, I wrote about the very same topic yesterday and touched on the very same points. Well, except for the gushy David Ortiz is the awesomest teammate stuff.

I won’t go any further than that. Just interesting, I guess.

My two favorite reasons to subscribe to MLB Extra Innings are that I get to catch some of my favorite players from around baseball and also get to keep up with former Red Sox. Last night featured a game that allowed me to do both, and what a game it was. The Dodgers visited the Astros, with Derek Lowe, Nomar Garciaparra and Bill Mueller taking the field for the Dodgers while former Yankee great Andy Pettitte was on the hill for the ‘Stros. Also, one of my very favorite players in all of baseball, J.D. Drew, has been swinging a hot bat lately and I was looking forward to catching him.

What a game it turned out to be. Lowe was magnificent, although he wouldn’t factor into the decision. Pettitte was even better, and through six-and-a-third, was spinning a no-hitter. With one out in the seventh, however, Drew broke up Pettitte’s no-hit bid. Andy had owned him in his previous two plate appearances and in this particular at-bat, Drew once again fell behind one-and-two. On Pettitte’s fourth offering, Drew jumped all over him, lining a shot to right field that skipped off the top of the fence and into the seats for a solo home run. The game was tied.

In the eighth, Takashi Saito looked phenomenal. He struck out Craig Biggio, Willy Taveras and baseball’s best player thus far in 2006, Morgan Ensberg. The problem was that he also surrendered a solo shot to Lance Berkman in between Taveras and Ensberg. So it was Brad Lidge time for the Astros, which, Albert Pujols and Scott Podsednik heroics aside, typically means Good-Night Irene. But these Dodgers weren’t about to go quietly.

Rafael Furcal led off the top half of the ninth with a ground-out. Kenny Lofton, sitting dead-red on a fastball, guessed correctly on the first pitch and got into a ball, lacing it into the right-center field gap for a triple. Next, my man J.D. worked an impressive walk after falling behind by two strikes to Lidge, and Jeff Kent followed Drew’s base on balls with one of his own. The bases were loaded with one out as Nomar Garciaparra came to the plate. Nomar took two breaking balls for balls to start the at-bat, then fouled a pitch off and swung and missed at a nice fast ball. On the fifth pitch he saw from Lidge, he got a fastball on the inner half of the plate and boy, did he get all over it. The ball was stung, and hit high in the air to deep left-center field. There was never any doubt. Nomar Garciaparra’s first Dodger home run was a grand slam off of the great Brad Lidge with his team trailing by a run in the ninth inning. The Dodgers would go on to win, 6-2.

You know how Sox fans have become a tad ugly, expecting to win all of the time almost like Yankee fans? You know how the Red Sox are worth more than any franchise not named the Yankees? You know how the Red Sox have a great chance at qualifying for the post-season almost every year because of the resources at their disposal? Well it was two players that ushered in this era, Nomar Garciaparra and Pedro Martinez. It will always bring a smile to my face to see these two succeed, especially so for Nomar given all of the injury troubles he has encountered. For one night again, Nomar was a superstar and the worn-out thrity-something that rarely looks like he’s having fun gave way to a jubilant youngster once again kicking ass and having a ball doing so. And boy was it great fun to watch.

I have mentioned this in some recent game recaps but there is a very simple managerial concept that, if Terry Francona would take to it, the Red Sox might pull out an extra win or two this season. At any given moment over the course of a game, at least until when/if Dustin Pedroia takes over at shortstop, the Red Sox will have two bench players that will be vastly superior to their shortstop with the bat. While Alex Gonzalez and Alex Cora excel in the field, both are sub-par offensive players. But because the two share stengths and weaknesses, they are virtually interchangeable. Accordingly, when a situation presents itself to pinch hit for Gonzalez in a key moment late in a game, Francona should be more inclined than he has been to date to call upon, say, Dustan Mohr or Wily Mo Pena to hit in Gonzalez’s place. With Cora available, he can play shortstop without too drastic of a defensive downgrade while the Sox will have increased their chances of coming through at the plate.

It’s simple, but Francona has yet to manifest any sort of inclination to implement a tactic of this sort. A veteran National League manager, if Francona would treat Gonzalez like an NL reliever late in a close game and pinch hit him almost automatically, he might be able to squeeze out some extra decisive hits in close and late situations.

David Ortiz homered and added a bunt single, Matt Clement labored but was effective enough and Boston’s bullpen looked as strong as it has all season long as the Red Sox earned a hard-fought, 6-3 victory to salvage the final game of the series.

Regarding the bunt single, I just want to touch on one point. If David Ortiz can get that bunt down to the point where he thinks he can successfully place it, say, 80% of the time, it is unarguably worthwhile. During yesterday’s telecast, Jerry Remy spoke of how he ordinarily is not in favor of Ortiz bunting but in this instance it was ok because now Scott Schoenweis would have to face Manny Ramirez. No, it is a good play because it makes David Ortiz more of an offensive weapon than he otherwise would be. Think about it. You all have seen the shift. All Ortiz has to do is get a bunt down anywhere between shortstop and the third base line and he has a single every time. I am confident that he can execute the play, like I said before, 80% of the time. So on plays where the shift is on, David Ortiz can hit at a .800/.800/.800 clip, which is better than his typical .290/.400/.600 line to which we have grown accustomed. Now, if he becomes sucessful at this bunting business, we have an improved Papi and teams that erroneously believe they are containing him will pay. If teams go away from the shift because of Ortiz’s new-found bunting prowess, then that opens up more room for Ortiz to hit the ball through. It’s just a beautiful situation. To summarize my feelings on this, David Ortiz should drop that bunt down every single time the shift is on provided that he is as proficient at it as he looked yesterday.

I have some other thoughts on the bullpen, roster management and yes, even some more questions for Tito but those can hold off until later. I am a bit strapped for time. The Sox kick off a three-game set with the Tribe tomorrow night at the Jake. Should be a good early-season barometer to see where the Sox stand.

Pass.

Clement and Josh Towers today at 1pm.

Manny Ramirez had busted out with two opposite-field home runs, Jason Varitek mixed in a home run of his own, Josh Beckett outpitched A.J. Burnett and the Sox were well on their way to victory. However, after a disastrous eighth inning, bizarre managerial moves by Terry Francona and John Gibbons, and some fantastic relief pitching by both teams, the Blue Jays would plate one run in the bottom of the twelfth to take home the win.

Having only tossed 78 pitches through seven frames, Beckett came back out for the eighth. He hit Aaron Hill with a fasball, was prematurely warned by home plate umpire Jeff Kellogg and from there, Beckett sort of seemed to fall apart. He gave up a home run to the next batter, Russ Adams, struck out Red Sox nemesis Frank Catalanotto and then surrendered another home run to Vernon Wells, who continued his magnificent start to 2006. Beckett came out for the eighth with a 6-2 lead and not ten minutes later was walking off the mound with a measley one-run lead.

Here’s where the decision-making gets fun. With nobody on base, Troy Glaus coming to the plate and five outs separating the Red Sox and victory, Francona once again eschewed his very best reliever for someone vastly inferior. The only out recorded while Mike Timlin was on the mound for this outing came on an unbelievably misguided decision by John Gibbons to hit and run with Lyle Overbay, who represented the go-ahead run at first, Shea Hillenbrand up and one out. Hillenbrand missed at the plate and Jason Varitek easily threw Overbay out. The Sox were not out of trouble, however, as Hillenbrand hit a grounder to Mike Lowell, who threw errantly, though not so errantly that a good first baseman couldn’t have picked him up. J.T. Snow, having entered the game for defensive purposes, missed the ball and Hillenbrand wound up on second. Did I mention Hee-Seop Choi homered again for Pawtucket last night?

Jonathan Papelbon came on with the go-ahead run on second and two outs in the eighth. He wouldn’t leave until he finished the tenth. So try to follow the logic. He is perfectly fine to come on for two-and-a-third in a tie game after his bullpen mate had squandered a lead but unfit to protect that lead for one-and-two-thirds. Francona has been just awful this season. The bright spot of course was that Papelbon was once again fantastic, allowing just one hit to a Blue Jays lineup that had come alive in the eighth inning.

The problem for the Red Sox was that B.J. Ryan and Justin Speier were every bit as good as Papelbon. Ryan pitched two perfect inings, striking out two in the process while Speier worked the eleventh and twelfth, and although he did walk three in his two innings, he was excellent and very difficult for the Red Sox to hit.

Francona made some other decisions that I questioned. Trot Nixon faced three left-handers he had no chance against and looked stupid all three times. He grounded out to shortstop against Scott Downs, and struck out against Scott Schoenweis and B.J. Ryan. Now, I didn’t mind Nixon facing Downs because Boston had a lead at the time and sticking with the better defensive outfielder was altogether defensible. It was a little less so come the tenth when Nixon was allowed to face Ryan but still, Ryan is tough on both lefties and righties and so maybe one could argue you want to stick with the better defender there too. So why pinch run Wily Mo Pena for Nixon with two outs in the twelfth? Pena is only really proficient at one thing in baseball. He can hit the shit out of a ball. How is the only role the Red Sox found for him over a four inning, hitless stretch in a tie game a pinch running one? Just baffling. Meanwhile, Willie Harris is being wishcast into an everyday job and Francona can’t figure out that, with Alex Cora on his bench, it’s perfectly fine to hit for Alex Gonzalez when the situation calls for it.

Finally, Francona needs to have more faith in a guy like Jermaine Van Buren. He throws hard, strikes a lot of batters out and if he is on the club, should pitch. He has been on the Red Sox since April 16, and has yet to see action. Rudy Seanez has seen action this season, and it sure is hard to see how he is going to be effective. So with the winning run on first and two outs last night with Overbay coming up, was Van Buren any worse of an option than Seanez, who has been just awful this year? Seanez’s second pitch was grooved down the middle, and Overbay punished it into the right-center field gap to plate the winning run.

With my big-picture glasses on, I can say that a number of things went well. Manny and ‘Tek both homered, which is a great sign for the offense. Mike Timlin, Keith Foulke and Rudy Seanez were all shaky, which I hope means that Van Buren, Manny Delcarmen and Craig Hansen are closer to regular Big League gigs. J.T. Snow misplayed a ball at first, which hopefully means Hee-Seop Choi will be here sooner rather than later. And Josh Beckett was excellent for much of his outing last night while A.J. Burnett is headed to Birmingham, AL to see Dr. James Andrews. I think the front office chose the right Fish to pursue.

The problem is that last night was a win the Sox could have really used because this afternoon it’s Lenny DiNardo and Roy Halladay squaring off. Yikes.

Scott Kazmir looked phenomenal and Johnny Gomes provided the offense as the Devil Rays salvaged a game at Fenway Park. For the Red Sox, Tim Wakefield was the tough-luck loser as he allowed just six base runners in eight innings while Terry Francona once again mismanaged in the late innings.

I am sorry to continue to harp on Tito, but it is this final point that I would like to address. In the seventh inning last night, trailing by two runs and with Travis Harper now pitching for the Devil Rays, the Sox had Wily Mo Pena, Dustan Mohr, Josh Bard and Alex Gonzalez coming up. Pena has been one of Boston’s best hitters this season, Mohr had homered earlier in the game, Bard is one of the worst hitters on the team and Gonzalez has looked just awful all year long. Well Tito pinch hit Willie Harris, Willie Freakin’ Harris, for Pena. Here are their respective career numbers, with Pena’s line this season mixed in to give a clearer picture of how he has performed as a Red Sox.

Harris (career): .256/.333/.314
Pena (career): .248/.303/.477
Pena (2006): .269/.387/.500

It was Francona’s worst move of the season, one so devoid of rationale that I still can’t quite grasp how a Major League manager would find such a move prudent. Anyway, after Harris popped out to shortstop, Mohr was due to come to the plate. This time Francona made the same mistake he made earlier in the series. He failed to cratively consider how best to utilize his roster. With Bard and Gonzalez coming up after Mohr, Francona once again pinch hit Trot Nixon for the best hitter of the three. With Jason Varitek on the bench, he could have hit for Bard and substituted Varitek to catch. With Alex Cora available, he could have hit for Gonzalez and slid Cora into shortstop. He chose to hit for Mohr.

It may not have mattered anyway, as Julian Tavarez was smacked around for two more insurance runs in the ninth. Still, these were terrible moves and ominous signs when you consider just how faulty the logic has to be for one to implement them. We get a fun match-up north of the border tonight, as former Fish Josh Beckett and A.J. Burnett square off. Enjoy!

Steven Goldman takes a look at the Sox through his Pinstriped glasses…

the Red Sox have the best record in the American League, but they have barely outscored their opponents, allowing 51 runs while scoring 55. The offensive problems that had been predicted for them have materialized, and a great deal now depends on Manny Ramírez, who has yet to record his first extra-base hit of the season. The pitching has been good but conceals weaknesses. Josh Beckett and Curt Schilling are pitching over their heads, Matt Clement is a mystery, and David Wells may be finished. The Red Sox are doing it with mirrors and David Ortíz.

Well now the Sox have outscored their opponents by 16 runs. A hat-tip is in order for Goldman’s prediction of Coco Crisp’s and Trot Nixon’s injuries, Jason Varitek’s becoming an offensive cess pool and Manny slugging his weight. All of those have “materialized.” Matt Clement is a “mystery” the same way any other league average-plus pitcher is. Yes, Beckett and Schilling are “pitching over their heads” but not that far over. Both are pretty good, Steve. And yes, David Wells may be finished but there is plenty of organizational depth to cover that loss, either via a call-up or a trade. As for the “mirrors and David Ortiz” quip, whatever. So Goldman’s a little cranky as the Sox get fat while improvement candidates outnumber regression ones.

He’s a Yankee fan. Can you blame him?

Link

On the one hand, I am happy that Stern will have a chance to play everyday and develop in Pawtucket. On the other, he is the only viable defensive center fielder that the Sox could have used with Crisp out, so things might get interesting defensively out there in the coming weeks. I guess the best thing to do at this point is just to hope for a speedy recovery from Coco.

Curt Schilling kept it going, Kevin Youkilis is becoming a folk hero and Trot Nixon and Mike Lowell are flashing the form that made them key contributors to championship baseball teams. Oh and the Sox took advantage of four Tampa Bay Devil Ray errors en route to a 9-1 victory at Fenway Park last night.

I was in attendance last night, and have to admit I didn’t think Schilling appeared to be very sharp. Given that he allowed just one run and seven baserunners in six innings while striking out seven, I would say that’s a pretty good sign. He looked just ok, and yet the results were magnificent. On the Fenway gun, Schilling sat in the low-90’s and touched the mid-90’s from time to time over the course of his outing. All in all it was a very successful outing from Curt Schilling. While I am not prepared to declare him all the way back, I think we can all safely hope that the Red Sox once again possess a true ace to send to the mound once every five games.

As for Youkilis, he had another three hits yesterday, including a towering lead-off home run against Tampa Bay starter Doug Waechter. Youkilis is now hitting .354/.448/.521 on the young season and although I think it would be ridiculous to postulate that Youkilis will hit at this level all season, once again, I think we can safely say we have a bona fide everyday caliber first baseman in Youks.

As for Nixon and Lowell, what can you say? Nixon is hitting .379/.500/.655 while Lowell is at .294/.357/.510. These numbers are meaningless at this point in the season, but it is just nice to know that both are still capable of playing pretty good baseball.

Scott Kazmir and Tim Wakefield tonight.

Another night, another exhilarating victory by the hometown team in the Fens. Yours truly had a front-row seat in the shiny new State Street Pavilion for the action and I can report that the latest Fenway redesign represents yet another seamless upgrade to baseball’s most romanticized venue.

For much of the game, it was an old fashioned pitcher’s duel. Matt Clement came out and looked a helluva lot better than he did last Thursday night against Toronto, going seven innings, yielding eight hits and two walks while striking out six. The only damage Tampa Bay inflicted on Clement came by way of consecutive hits from the first three hitters of the seventh inning. Ty Wigginton, who is turning out to be a valuable off-season acquisition for the Rays, homered to start the seventh and Toby Hall and Tomas Perez followed with consecutive doubles to give Tampa Bay a 2-1 lead.

For his part, Casey Fossum showed the form that once made him too much to give up for Bartolo Colon. Through six, Fossum had encountered little in the way of trouble. He wiggled out of a bases-loaded jam in the second and surrendered back-to-back doubles to David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez in the third, but other than that it was relatively smooth sailing for Fossum.

The same cannot be said, however, for the Tampa Bay bullpen. Scott Dunn, Shawn Camp, Ruddy Lugo and Chad Orvella combined to surrender five hits and five earned runs in an inning and two thirds. Dunn also allowed Fossum’s inherited runner to score.

A quiet game through six and a half innings turned pretty wild in the bottom of the seventh. With men on first and third and one out, Mark Loretta singled sharply to right field, just over the outstretched arm of second baseman Jorge Cantu. Kevin Youkilis, the runner at first, immediately scampered back to first for fear of being doubled up. Right fielder Russell Branyan corralled the ball and quickly threw to second to get the force out. Still, the tying run had scored. Ortiz followed Loretta with a wall-ball double. With men on second and third and two out, Rays manager Joe Maddon elected to pitch to Manny Ramirez, who lined a ball hard to right field. Although it was a tough play, Branyan played the ball terribly, and it skipped off his glove. Both runners would score, giving the Sox a 4-2 lead.

For some reason, even though he had labored through the seventh, Clement came out for the eighth. It was a peculiar move, one that looked downright moronic after Clement threw four consecutive balls to Travis Lee to start the inning. So with the tying run at the plate and six outs remaining in the game, whom do you go and get? That’s right, your second-best reliever. Mike Timlin came on, gave up consecutive doubles to Johnny Gomes and Branyan and allowed the tying runs to score before retiring the final three batters of the inning.

Terry Francona made another mistake in the bottom half of the eighth, one that I wouldn’t characterize as egregious, but instead a mistake that manifested Francona’s propensity to not consider the big picture. Mike Lowell doubled to lead off Boston’s half of the eighth. So with a man on second and nobody out, three men would almost assuredly come to the plate with an opportunity to drive in Lowell, who represented the go-ahead run. Dustan Mohr, Adam Stern, who had come on for Wily Mo Pena for defensive purposes, and Alex Gonzalez were due up. Francona had Trot Nixon available to pinch hit, and opted to immediately use Nixon to hit in Mohr’s stead. Francona chose to hit for the best of the three hitters that were sure to come up instead of the more prudent move, which would have been to hit for Gonzalez and replace Nixon defensively with Alex Cora.

Still, all’s well that ends well. Youkilis hit a dramatic double off the top of the Green Monster to plate Nixon and Stern and for good measure, Loretta singled home Youkilis with some additional insurance. The CLOSER came on and preserved a three-run lead, albeit with some difficulty.

Curt Schilling and Doug Waechter tonight.

Every now and again over the course of this season I am going to provide a quick team-by-team update on the various Red Sox Minor League affiliates. It will not be terribly in depth, but rather a quick primer on who looks good, who doesn’t, who appears like he may one day help the big club and who looks like he may be flaming out. The Red Sox have a bona fide top-10 Minor League system these days, and more than ever it will behoove informed Sox fans that are interested in keeping tabs on the club’s future to keep an eye on the Minors. I will focus only on those who have any shot whatsoever to help a Major League Baseball team one day and so if some 40th round pick you played Legion Ball with has a hot couple of weeks and I omit him here, it’s probably because I don’t really think he has a crack to ever help a big club.

Bear in mind just how early in the year we are here and take some of the numbers with a grain of salt. Without further ado…

Pawtucket Red Sox
Record: 6-6
Runs Scored: 38
Runs Allowed: 46

Bright spots offensively on the Paw-Sox include Hee-Seop Choi and Luke Allen. In his first 19 plate appearances, Choi has posted a .267/.421/.467 line and should be helping out in Boston before too long. Allen, a six-year free agent the Sox signed from the Angels system has hit .300/.364/.600 so far in 2005. Allen had a nice year in hitter-friendly Salt Lake last season, posting a .287/.360/.511 line. On the pitching side, Abe Alvarez has been phenomenal out of the gate. He has allowed just eleven base runners in eighteen innings, posting a 2.50 ERA in the process. Cla Meredith, Manny Delcarmen, Craig Breslow and Matt Ginter have all looked impressive as well, while Jon Lester has been awful in his first two starts. Ken Huckaby ah…well…he ah…Ken Huckaby sucks.

Portland Sea Dogs
Record: 6-5
Runs Scored: 42
Runs Allowed: 37

Nobody stands out on the offensive side of things for Portland, except David Murphy in a bad way. His .225/.279/.300 start is disappointing after his tremendous finish in 2005. I thought there might have been a chance that he had established a new level of performance and that he was a surefire future Big Leaguer. Not that 43 plate appearances is cause to throw in the towel or anything, it’s just as I said – disappointing. Three Sea Dog hurlers have looked fantastic. Edgar Martinez and Craig Hansen are fulfilling expectations, while Devern Hansack is off to a better start than anyone could have hoped.

Wilmington Blue Rocks
Record: 5-7
Runs Scored: 48
Runs Allowed: 34

The Blue Rocks feature four position players that I believe have a legitimate shot of one day contributing in the Bigs. Two of them are off to excellent starts and two have come out of the gate a little slower. Jacoby Ellsbury has been remarkable and may be in line for a promotion sooner rather than later. He’s hitting .370/.396/.543 and has six stolen bases to boot. If one wanted to nitpick, his low walk-rate may be a bit of a dampener on his potential but again, it’s a nitpick. Jeff Corsaletti has started out hot as well, hitting .333/.440/.476. Corsaletti has a mature approach but just gap power at the moment. Hopefully he develops more of a power stroke. Jed Lowrie has started slowly, hitting .256/.340/.349 and Ian Bladergroen’s .200/.310/.429 line will hopefully improve in the coming weeks. Thomas Hottovy has led the pitching staff in Wilmington thus far, allowing just twelve base runners in seventeen innings and sporting a 2.12 ERA. Luis Mendoza and Kyle Jackson have also looked strong.

Greenville Drive
Record: 4-7
Runs Scored: 63
Runs Allowed: 43

Jeff Natale is off to the hottest start in the whole organization. Natale, a Trinity College graduate (hooray for a Liberal Arts education!), plays about as bad a second base as one could while still being nominally a second baseman. But boy can he rake. His .330/.458/.650 start certainly bears watching. Luis Soto and Christian Lara have started off hot too, and Lara has even mixed in six stolen bases. On the pitching side, 2005 draftees Clay Buchholz and Michael Bowden are off to dynamic starts. Buchholz has allowed nine base runners and struck out nine in ten innings of work, while Bowden’s K-numbers look impressive but he has been hit around a bit, too. Phil Seibel, who had a cup of coffee up here in Boston in 2005, is coming off of Tommy John surgery and therefore starting in the warmer temps of the South Atlantic League. He has pitched lights-out, and figures to head north before long.

Well that was one whale of a game yesterday, as the Sox erased three separate deficits and finally took the lead in a most dramatic fashion, winning late 7-6. Down to their final strike with two outs in the ninth, Kevin Youkilis legged out an infield single. Then, protecting a one-run lead in the ninth with Mark Loretta up and David Ortiz (who had already homered twice in the game) on deck, Eddie Guardado made the mistake of falling behind Loretta, two balls and no strikes. I have to believe Loretta knew Guardado would be forced to serve up something fat lest he risk having to face Papi, and boy did Mark put a charge into one. It was a dramatic ending to a great game on one of the best days to be a Bostonian.

Terry Francona continues to make decisions as though he has no regard for which options available to him at a given moment offer up the best chance of helping to win baseball games. Keith Foulke pitched a very good eighth inning yesterday, managing to keep the Sox within one run of the M’s and Boston managed to tie the game in the bottom half of the eighth. With Mike Timlin and Jonathan Papelbon both available to Francona, Tito stuck with Foulke, who proceeded to get one out before yielding two sharply hit singles to Adrian Beltre and Willie Bloomquist. So in a tie game in the ninth with the go-ahead run on third and less than two outs, the Red Sox were in dire need of a strikeout. Jonathan Papelbon has 40 strikeouts in 41 career big-league innings and though he did have two saves on the weekend, had thrown just 25 pitches since Friday night. He was rested, and had been lights-out all year. Mike Timlin is a very good reliever in his own right, but relies more on the conversion of batted balls into outs than Papelbon does. Francona opted for Timlin, because, well, he’s not the CLOSER. The CLOSER can only pitch the final inning while leading by three or fewer runs regardless of whether or not more important situations come along in which it may be more advantageous to use your best reliever. Francona pushed his luck when he stuck with Foulke for the ninth, and badly bungled the subsequent decision to go to Mike Timlin ahead of Jonathan Papelbon.

The Devil Rays come to town and our old friend Casey Fossum takes the hill for Tampa Bay. Matt Clement will look to avenge last Thursday’s rough outing.

Since last I posted the Red Sox have managed just eleven runs in four games, though they did manage to win twice in that span. Matt Clement pitched terribly on Thursday night against Toronto, while Curt Schilling, Tim Wakefield and Josh Beckett were all excellent this weekend against Seattle. The Red Sox are 8-4 at the moment, and to their credit they are 4-0 in one-run ballgames. But relying on perfection when staked to the most tenuous of leads also represents a longer-term warning sign. The way the Red Sox are winning at the moment is not a sustainable formula over the long haul. As the season goes on, Curt Schilling and Josh Beckett will mix in an occasional poor outing and Jonathan Papelbon and his bullpen mates will cough up leads. The way you insulate yourself from such inevitabilities is by putting runs on the board, something the Red Sox have had no trouble doing over the last three seasons or so. So how do I feel about this team now? Well on the one hand they are winning, so I feel good. But on the other, they are doing so in a way that will be difficult to sustain, so I am concerned. Still on the other hand, the Red Sox have so far withstood injuries to Trot Nixon and Coco Crisp and endured slow starts from Manny Ramirez, Jason Varitek, Mark Loretta and Alex Gonzalez (he’s not this bad). Inasmuch as I believe the offense will come around, I am not really concerned that the Red Sox will continue to have to eke out these one-run wins.

Encouraging has been Terry Francona’s usage of Crisp and Nixon’s replacements. He seems to have settled on platooning Adam Stern and Dustan Mohr in center field while Wily Mo Pena has slid in and become the full-time right fielder. Pena is done in that role as of this morning, however, as Trot Nixon returns to action. Well given Nixon’s track record I shouldn’t say Pena is “done” as the full-time right fielder but “done for now” I guess. Less encouraging has been Francona’s lineup construction and in-game management. The Red Sox trotted out an 8-9-1-2 of Josh Bard, Alex Gonzalez, Adam Stern and Alex Cora on Saturday and paid dearly for it. Compounding the problem was that Francona only decided to pinch hit for any of them in the ninth inning, instead of in earlier, more opportunistic instances like the 7th inning, when the Sox left two men on base as Stern and Cora looked hapless. Mark Loretta, Mike Lowell and Jason Varitek were all available for duty, and none saw action until it was too late.

Still, the Red Sox are 8-4 while the under-performers outnumber those exceeding expectations and two key players have gone down. No, the way they are winning games right now is not the way they should plan on going about the whole season but I don’t think it’s a concern. Manny Ramirez is not going to slug .214 this season, Jason Varitek is going to come around and Coco Crisp will come back strong atop the Red Sox lineup. So I guess I take the optimistic view here. The more wins the Sox can stash away while failing to play to their capabilities, all the more fun it will be when they hit their stride.

I’m a bit of a web dork. Hmm, let me rephrase: I’m a huge web dork. I work for a web hosting company, do most of the day-to-day tech stuff that affects our fair site, dig RSS, AJAX, and all of those other fun internet acronyms. So, for a while now, I’ve been using some of the “meme-tracker” websites — the most notable being tech.memeorandum.com.

A meme-tracker is, basically, a quick way of seeing what the big stories are in the internet world that day. The site does some nifty behind the scenes work of tracking a bunch of big sites, looking to see what stories are being linked to, and as more people link to/talk about a story, it shows up on the site. It’s kind of an easy way of looking at the big stories in a particular space (tech.memeorandum.com being technology, the original memeorandum.com being politics).

The man behind memeorandum created a baseball meme-tracker called ballbug.com. Ballbug is a nifty little site, where you can pop in and see a snapshot of what other folks are writing about. In one quick swoop, you can get a nice high level look into baseball for the day, with the ability to drill down a bit further.

There’s just one problem — baseball is already subdivided into 30 separate interest groups. They’re called teams. That fact tends to mean that the baseball blogosphere is already pretty well divided and insulated. There’s going to be just one or two interesting things for each team, each day (generally, a game or an injury). So, you can scan, see the big news, and drill down further … but because there’s not a lot of cross-pollination (we’re not linking to a whole lot of Bronx Banter posts …. yet), there’s not really any “big” stories. Each story is big only to the people in its area of interest.

Striketwo.net is another baseball meme-tracker. I’ve been using it for the past few weeks to help pick out stories for the “News from Around the League” posts I’ve been doing (which will be back, I promise, since I know how much you all *loved* them). It’s a nice tool, but it’s main page has the same problem that Ballbug has: there’s so little cross-pollination that there’s no convergence around big stories; instead, there’s just a big grouping around a game story or injury. Now, that will probably change if there’s a huge baseball story (Bonds being indicted, or a big steroid suspension), but even on a big day like Jackie Robinson Day, there’s just not a lot of commonality in the baseball blogosphere.

But … that’s not the end of striketwo.net’s talents. The greatest feature on the site is unique to striketwo.net, and the reason that it outshine’s Ballbug. It’s the Player Tag Cloud feature, and it’s fantastic. A tag cloud is used to give you a quick insight into which terms are being used most often. The larger the usage, the bigger the tag in the cloud (take a look, it’s easy to figure out). Striketwo.net has a tag cloud of player names. Each time a player is mentioned in a story, it gets tracked. Right now, Bronson Arroyo and Barry Bonds have both been mentioned a bunch. Val Majewski, well, he’s got sort of a small tag. There’s some team bias here: more folks write about the Red Sox and Yankees, so they get more mentions. But, it’s not so bad that it removes the usefullness of the tool.

This goes a level deeper. The tag cloud isn’t just used to see how often a player is mentioned. When you click on that player name, you’re dropped into a list of items that have referenced the player in recent days. It’s an incredibly useful feature, and something I find myself using often. Oh … did I mention you can get an RSS feed of a player? So, you want to know everytime someone writes something about Nook Logan? Or Kevin Youkilis? Just click on their name and snag the RSS feed into your favorite RSS reader (if you need more info on RSS, maybe start here).

Now, in the spirit of full disclosure, our fair site is tracked by striketwo.net. But we pretty much have zero influence. So this wasn’t done in any way to make ourselves appear bigger. The nature of a tool like striketwo.net is that one blog/site/person can’t game the system. Now, if you linked to this article on your site (and they told two friends, and they told two friends … ), then this would pop up on striketwo.net. That’s how it works–the more folks that link to something, or discuss a common issue, the more likely that it’ll vault up to the top of the home page.

We’re a couple of weeks into the season, and that’s given me a few weeks to use striketwo.net. I’ve found it incredibly useful, and useful enough that I thought I would spread the gospel a bit. Head on over and poke around a bit … and drop us a comment to let us know what you think. Or, take advantage of the striketwo technology–write your own review of striketwo, link it here, and watch the discussion get picked up.

Technology is pretty great sometimes.