Palatable, but Far from Delicious
No losses are easy to take, but this is about as close as it gets. After winning five in a row against stiff competition, the Red Sox succumbed to the law of (Red) averages and dropped a poorly fought contest to the Indians last night. Why is this game more palatable? It was one they had no business winning, they were out-hit 18 to 10 and out pitched by the old-school efficiency of Paul Byrd.
There were missed offensive opportunities in the second and seventh, but I can find a way to give the offensive goats a mulligan. Pedroia continues to hit (Who was right, Dad?), making Cora all but irrelevant, and Coco keeps getting his mug on SportsCenter with those diving catches. His jumps are overrated, but he makes up ground quickly. His ability to lay out coming forward makes him average defensively. Most centerfielders play shallower and make that catch on their shoestrings, but have difficulty with balls at the wall. He’s been much better than last year, time will tell if this is the real Coco in center.
I wish I knew what’s wrong with Matsuzaka. He had at least the cutter and splitter working last night, but the Indians knew what was coming. In March I assumed Daisuke’s strength would be consistency; when a hurler has 6 go-to pitches he should be able to adjust if a few of them aren’t working, right? It looked like he was forced to use his pitches in ways he isn’t used to. When he throws that cutter inside, he’s looking for a swing and contact. It’s not a pitch that he’ll ususally throw to Pronk or Sizemore, but Barfield and Shoppach don’t have the batspeed to get the head on it. I’d attribute last night’s ineffectiveness to a varied off-day routine, if it were an isolated incident. Color me worried about his next start - it would have been far uglier had he not escaped an early jam thanks to an alley-oop GIDP by our undercover agent, Trot Nixon.
I hope you find the following sentence pleasurable. Peter Abraham reports Phil Hughes had a setback and won’t be back until August at the earliest. I’ll probably pay close attention to the Yankees until the trading deadline, but if things continue along the same lines I’ll have to look the other way at some point. Stay classy, Sox fans.
The Sox are off tonight. In other words, my evening is ruined.
May 31st, 2007 at 8:33 am
Yeah, this one didn’t bother me as much as it would normally. That Cleveland lineup was due to bust out eventually.
Matsuzaka in 2007 is reminding me of Beckett in 2006: you can see that he has the stuff, it’s just knowing when to throw what vs the AL lineups.
May 31st, 2007 at 11:37 am
good point about the inevitabilty of a loss. You seem to right about Dustin. Don t worry about Matsuzaka What team has a better number 3 starter? I believe we will see in him a year like Beckett had last season-high number of wins and a high ERA, this is still a season of adjustments for him. Next season he will copy Beckett’s record in 2007-in other words he is a year behind Beckett. Coco is a concern. Ichiro is in the future.
May 31st, 2007 at 5:30 pm
Look at the bright side, you can do some more shopping.
June 1st, 2007 at 8:36 am
I think the number of pitches contributes to the inconsistency. It’s unlikely that he will have command over 5-6 pitches so he’s going to have games where he can’t figure out what is working in the early going and should get stronger as the game goes on. I think Wednesday was a case of a guy who was still a little weak from the flu. The early hits were mostly bloops and grounders, he seemed to hit the wall around 75 pitches though which is to be expected from a guy who was sick all week.