Boston 8
Toronto 0

Once again, the Red Sox took all the drama out of the game fairly early, as they waltzed to a victory and a sweep of the lowly Toronto Blue Jays.  Right now, the Jays are like that bird that smacks into your living room window, breaking its neck.  It’s still alive, but barely, and it’s floundering around pathetically on your back porch, desperately hoping for a neighborhood cat to come along and end its horrible existence. 

I feel the end may be nigh for Toronto manager John Gibbons.  This team has too much talent to be playing this poorly.  It might not necessarily be his fault, but he’ll likely take the hit.  The team is now firmly in last place after their 9th straight loss, and they could not look worse in the field.  Right now, the only thing this team has going for them is Sal Fasano’s mustache.  If they could somehow find away to draw energy from Fasano’s amazing ’stache, perhaps they could recapture some of that swagger that made them the third AL East powerhouse in 2006.

For the second straight start, All-Star starter Roy Halladay was beaten up badly, allowing the most runs over two starts that he has ever allowed in such a span.  Things were under control until the third inning, when the Sox delivered 6 straight 2-out hits, including the back-breaker: a Mike Lowell 3-run golf shot over the left field wall.  Halladay was noticably less sharp than usual; his fastball was only around 90 MPH, which made his slider much less deceptive (Lowell’s HR was on a low slider). 

Tim Wakefield, on the other hand, finally got some run suport to go along with his beautiful pitching performance, as he allowed only 3 hits in 7 scoreless innings.  He now stands at 4-3 with a minuscule 1.79 ERA, and has been arguably the best starting pitcher in baseball thus far this season.  The game was finished off by Hideki Okajima (who threw his 800th inning of the season), and J.C. Romero.

It was refreshing to see J.D. Drew with a couple of hits, hopefully emerging from the cocoon of futility which had entrapped him over the past week and a half.  One of his hits was a Texas-Leaguer, and if you believe what “they” say, sometimes that type of thing gets you out of a slump.  Of course, that sounds silly, and we can only hope that he just gets a better read on the ball going forward, perhaps with a tad more confidence after a mulitple-hit game.

Also joining in on the hit parade was Kevin Youkilis with 2 doubles and a single.  Kevin, who seemed to be hobbling a bit after being nailed by several pitches recently, raised his OPS to .873 after his 3-5 performance.  Alex Cora also chipped in 2 hits, which actually decreased his batting average to .415, and continued to make our second base situation interesting.  Manny Ramirez had a couple of singles, raising his batting average to .250.

Tonight, the Sox come home and take on a bird of a different color, the Baltimore Orioles (16-18).  Julian Tavarez will try to pace the Sox to their 4th straight victory, as he takes the hill against rookie left-hander (UH-OH!) Brian Burress.  Burress has pitched well, fanning 18 in 17 innings, but he does have control issues, with 10 walks over those 17 innings.  Hopefully he takes pity on the Red Sox offense, who tend to lie down like diseased three-legged dogs at the feet of rookie lefties.  I’m actually kidding, because I’m fairly confident the Sox will handle this kid tonight.  Those control issues will not play well against this offense right now, and the more patient bats (Jason Varitek, Dustin Pedroia) will likely be back in the lineup. 

After this recent streak, there just isn’t much for me to gripe about. I’ll leave you with 2 intriguing stats:

1) Mike Lowell now has only 1 less HR (7) than he does strikeouts (8).
2) The last time the Red Sox had a 7-game lead in their division was 1995 (which is, incidentally, the last time the Sox won the division).

Enjoy your weekend.

Comments are closed