Dustin Pedroia texted Terry Francona "I'm back!" after getting the thumbs up to play ball. He will play second base with Pawtucket today and DH on Sunday and (if all goes well) be with the Red Sox on Tuesday night at Fenway.
Josh Beckett is frustrated:
I get into counts and try to do too much, and the ball flattens out and goes to the middle of the plate. It's frustrating. I've tried to work on it in between starts, and it obviously didn't do any good. It's a shame that we lose a game like that because we scored a lot of runs, and I couldn't hold it.Beckett pitched very well in three starts after coming off the disabled list, but in his last two outings, he has allowed 13 runs and 21 hits in only 9.2 innings.
SSS and all, but last night's game-winning home run makes Nelson Cruz 5-for-5 (2 doubles, 1 home run, 5 RBI) against Tim Wakefield. ... Francona: "We go to Wake first and we get a lead and we bring in Pap, then we've got nobody behind him. Wake was going to pitch until we won or lost. The good news is he won't be tired."
The last time Boston suffered consecutive walk-off losses was on July 1-2, 2004 (5-4 to the Yankees in 13 and 6-3 to Atlanta in 12).
Daniel Bard, on the negative reaction to Jonathan Papelbon:
It just shows you how fickle some fans - some, not all - are. I think some fans realize what they have in him and how good he is ...Bard has a point, but he's wrong to say the complaint is merely "one outing against arguably one of the best offenses in the game".
4 comments:
PawSox:
Reddick, CF
Nava, RF
Pedroia, 2B
Delgado, DH
Anderson, 1B
Navarro, 3B
Hermida, LF
Brown, C
Romero, SS
Wow, that's not a bad lineup right there.
For the record, I turned against Papelbon last year, some time before the JOS game. I remember thinking even during that game that he was not the same pitcher he had been and that our lead was not safe with him pitching.
So there, Shakespeare.
He's had a bad year and a half. Pitchers do that.
Cross-posting one of my comments from Red Sox Beacon:
"Sure, Papelbon’s peripherals have been pretty bad this season, but I want to see the rest of the year before I conclude whether or not it’s a fluke. Only his walks were a problem last year, and those have jumped around over the course of his career, though to be fair never to this degree. He was lucky on fly balls, which helped counteract that. However, given that his 0.66 HR/9 of 2009 is closer to his career HR/9 of 0.70 that his 2010 HR/9 of 1.15, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect a lowering of that rate. His BABIP will go up, sure, but so will his LOB% and, perhaps, his K/9.
Digressing to peek at pitch values, Papelbon’s FB isn’t as good as it has been, but both his Slider and Splitter have been much improved."
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