June 2009: In time for June, here comes the Swoon. (Gin and juices, with crushed Xanax on the rim.) Just $2! (Management not responsible for loss of possessions after consumption.)
This team is not intact, its offense is not its actual offense, and this is not our beautiful three-game deficit with just an +18 run differential, but it's a suck spiral all the same.
Regarding your performance since the All-Star break, which has been a rapid-fire version of the standard Sox summer swoon, I must say:
You're all better than this. Except maybe Manny Delcarmen. Who hasn't even been bad lately.
Play better or fuck off.
Yours in Christ,
Josh
P.S. for Theo--
This proposed three-way deal of Manny Ramirez for Jason Bay plus prospects sounds like the Nomar Garciaparra trade of 2008: a shake-up trade in which a disgruntled though incredibly talented veteran is traded for less than equal talent in return, to shake up an underachieving team. This armchair GM right here signs off on it.
We came very close to the apocalypse last night. Oh, it's odd enough that John Lackey of the 7+ ERA at Fenway got a win. But two outs away from a no-hitter? Two more and the four horses come in. As it is, start praying. President Lou Gossett Jr. can't save you now.
But though the Angels won twice yesterday, I'm much more concerned with the win that involved the Sox. I know this isn't an opinion I've seen much, but the difference between Casey Kotchman and Mark Texiera is, though significant, not everything you might expect. Was it a good trade? Absolutely. Was it a great trade? Not unless they resign.
As for Boston, Bartolo Colon can't come off the DL soon enough to take Clay's spot back. Sorry y'all, but shit is getting drastic, and you can only rebuild and contend so much at the same time. The kid doesn't have it this year.
If the Rays hadn't lost Monday and if the Yankees (the team my less-educated Sox fan friends remain fully convinced will win the AL East...hold your panic, or at least keep some of it directed Tampa way, people) weren't currently catching a B'More beatdown, I might be home sick today with a hangover of the worst kind.
One more thing about the Angels and how their demolishing of the Red Sox bodes for any playoff matchup with them: you never can tell. The Indians didn't beat the Yankees in the regular season last year.
But let's focus on getting in the playoffs now. Please.
It has been a long time, barflies, but June became the month I squandered most of my vacation days while working double time at the road office to make up for it, so sadly, the ol' barangrill went a bit to seed. I'm also sorry to come back to this state of affairs.
Bullpens and relief pitchers are funny things. The relievers so critical to 2004's success, especially in the extra innings of the middle of the ALCS, fell flat on their faces in 2005, in no small part because Keith Foulke's knees died for our sins during said series.
The seemingly boffo (TM, Variety) Eric Gagne trade didn't work because...well, there's a myriad of reasons best summarized in the famed phrase "Gagne sucks" (or "Gagne suces" in his native tongue), but apparently saving meaningless games for a sub .500 team and holding leads for a World Series contenders are bananas and pomegranates.
And without even touching upon Jon Papelbon's uptick in blown saves, because he still looks quite right, it's apparent that Hideki Okajima's present fall from form has hurt the team immensely, because Manny Delcarmen has come into the set-up role, and Manny Delcarmen is no '07 Okajima. No, no, no, no.
Last night, in a game a frustrated Sox team really could have used to stay within 1.5 games of the best team in baseball/first place Rays (and no, I still can't believe I typed that phrase), the Sox got the best of the Floridians in the Inefficiency-Off between Daisuke Matuszaka and Scott Kazmir (5 IP a piece, 4 runs for Scott, 1 for Daisuke). That's the good part.
Then came the odd but not wholly surprising appearance of Hideki Okajima in the 6th inning. Tito gets 3 points for putting him into a clean inning (Okajima's ERA is deceptive, since he's allowing more inherited runners to score than even Mike Timlin did in a similarly deceptive [recurring theme] 2005 season) but -5 points for the earlyness of this. Unless the plan was to pitch Okajima 2 innings, I just don't think he's the 6th inning pitcher. Hansen or Aardsma, anyone?
And then came the 7th.
And there went the lead. Craig Hansen ultimately took the loss because in a reversal of order, Hansen relieved for Delcarmen (supposed new 8th inning man, in for an ineffective Aardsma, who probably shoulda been pitching the 6th...) because Delcarmen could get no one out. Six pitchers in all, essentially the whole bullpen minus Papelbon, got into this game, with only Javier Lopez and Okajima somewhat undisgraced. And there's your game.
Four of the five losses the Medias Rojas have currently strung together are of the one-run variety, but although the sabemetrician's maxim is that one-run games are something of a matter of luck, these particular losses have either been caused by
a) Blow-ups by the setup men, or b) Games made close by not-quite-successful 9th inning rallies. In other words, the sort you can't expect to win.
What it all adds up to is that it feels like it's 2005 all over again to me. My hope is that Big Bartolo comes back good and healthy, so we can throw a new set-up man into the mix. Here's a hint who: newspaper headlines can't help but call him Masterful.
And, oh yeah, in schadenfreude news, the above happened. A few things to note:
1) Cynthia and Alex's children's names: Natasha Alexander and Ella Alexander. Want a son much, Alex? That's not naming, that's branding. The only thing possibly dumber would be if both the Rodriguez girls' names had the initials HR in them. But even that arrogant stupidity wouldn't be original.
2) Cynthia may have left Alex for Lenny Kravitz. Alex might be shacking up with (swallows a small bit of throw-up) Madonna. This would mark the first time a marriage broke up and the shattered pieces both went to (considerably) older mates. And as far as Madonna is concerned, this would again mean that, if you believe Jose's tales of hooking Alex up with a PED dealer, A-Rod is just following Jose Canseco's lead. Years after the expiration date, no less. (Shudders again.)
“When they make the schedule like this, it’s not just that we play 20 in a row, we play (expletive) 8 o’clock getaway games in Oakland (sic), so there’s not enough (complaining) and moaning that goes on to get it changed, I don’t know what the (expletive) we need to do,” said Josh Beckett after a really amazing start spoiled by, you know, a complete game shutout by James Shields.
The schedule has been fucking brutal (you'd be a wee bit cranky if you had to work 20 straight days, no?) and the results have been accordingly flat. Two great starts wasted in a three-game sweep by Tampa Bay (and a winnable one by Tim Wakefield, if the Sox had exploited Garza's allergic reaction to the strike zone a bit more), part of a strange and dramatic death of the offense, which went sharply from an 8-game streak of scoring 5 runs or more to 4, 1, and 0 runs.
Enjoy the day off, Sox. Don't stay up late waiting for GTA IV to come out. And then please, please stop playing like this.
Tampa Bay's for real though, I should note. Let's go on a quick journey through great moments in D'Rays history:
March 9, 1995: Vince Naimola's Tampa Bay group awarded a Major League Baseball franchise.
April 27, 2008: Tampa Bay defeats Boston to end up in a three-way tie for first in the AL East, marking the latest in a season Tampa has ever been in first place.
Eric Gagne's career blown saves total, before 2007: 6.
Eric Gagne's blown saves total, 2007-2008 (so far): 8, including another today.
Eric Gagne's saves rate in 2008: 60% (6/10)
Eric, have a nice Chartreuse out of the bar's private collection, and call it a day. God forbid some other team with bullpen issues thinks you can help them next year.
Sox are kinda good lately though, ain't they? More on that later.
One of the few/only bright spots of a dispiriting three game sweep to Matt Stairs and a buncha psuedo-Canadians was this: Kyle Snyder's Sox career is as good as over. Because he's been designated for assignment. And we all know what that actually means:
Poor Kyle. He wasn't even good enough to be assigned for death by Mortal Kombat II. Or good enough for me to spend more than two minutes in MS Paint.
Some teams just come out more ready than others out of Spring Training, and let's just say we're not roaring out of the gate this year, partially because of the travel. One below .500 on a (gasp) seven game road trip (that also included five exhibition games) isn't good, but it isn't atrocious either. Bats are always the last thing to get going, you know, unless your bats are facing Kyle Snyder or Manny Delcarmen. Let's just go home now. And rather than think of what a scary team Detroit still might be when they wake up, think of this:
Erg. And I saw John Maine pitch the best game I've ever seen in person yesterday. And...
And Philadelphia is a city in need of a championship, but that lack of success has made for some sour souls...
And...
Fuck.
I'm looking at this picture and it looks sad to me, when I should actually be infuriated. See, I have a traumatic memory with a Mr. Met. It was a Binghamton Mets game. I was ten. Some kid was having fun with Mr. Met shooting a Super Soaker at him, which I did not understand was clearly something prearranged. So innocent Joshua Lee Drimmer, not yet jaded, sarcastic, cynical, or ever confused for anything resembling cool, thought, "Ooh, cool. And I've got this cup of water..." And yeah, so I kinda splashed him. And a voice came from Mr. Met like that ol' voice of death and ice cream, a scary fuckin' thing to hear coming from such a friendly, jovial, baseball-headed...well, not man...suit. You know, like Tom Carvel's voice...but angry...
And this voice was not offering me the crappy ice cream Patton Oswalt waxed not-so-nostalgically on a couple years back on Feelin' Kinda Patton. It wasn't friendly if creepy. No, it was saying, in a gravely, cigarette-destroyed yet LOUD voice,
"GET THIS KID OUTTA HERE!"
And I was taken out of the game, to great embarrassment since the summer camp kids I'd come with watched me leave, crying. They let me back in, but there's still a man somewhere in Upstate New York who I hope is suffering a very random stabbing pain right this moment, preferably in the taint. (Just one quick jab. I'm a kind soul:)
So you can see how sad I truly am for New York's "other" team. You know, the one that actually does deserve better.
And this is all I have to say about John Maine. I have seen the future. Maine's the name. Effective wildness (for now) is the game. Hey, it's worked before. And it can be solved.
But the present is nothing but pain. We Sox fans know this pain from a long history of collapse and near-misses. I'm so, so sorry.
Just leave New York. Don't think about how Roger Clemens shut the lineup down even when he couldn't find the strike zone and Chien Mien-Wang then confirmed with even more no-hit innings that yes, it's not you, it's us. Don't think of how wasted Curt Schilling's outing was, or how if it wasn't for Kyle Farnsworth (best picture ever of him here) we would have been shut out twice, having wasted our offense on the White Sox. Don't consider the fact that a sweep was the ONLY outcome that could constitute genuine failure, and just like that, it's 5 games again and Yankees fans are taunting me all around my cubicle. And don't let me keep thinking just how long indefinitely is. Just leave this magical city. There's nothing for you here right now:
He's saying "I deserve to die by knife to the head" if that's illegible. I'm too pissed off to perfect that quote balloon in MS Paint right now. Fuckity fuck fuck fuck.
In deference to common sense and the Yankees' continuing run against the American League (even if it is largely against the have-nots), there will be no more premature mention of magic number about these parts.
Not a fun couple of games, as the Red Sox blow two leads to the Angels. Half-assed analysis:
Game 1) Why have Gagne, Okajima, and Papelbon if you don't want to use them, with or without the lead? Why is my dread of Julian Tavarez returning? Why does Manny have to be thrown out of a game that ends with Brandon Moss striking out, with runners on, in his place?
Game 2) Repeat much of 1, as the relievers put this game out of reach. Hidden goat: Manny Delcarmen, who allowed all his inherited runners to score like a trust fund baby spending someone else's inheritance. See where these two games have left me? Making worse analogies than ever!
The last time I saw a team score fewer runs on more hits, it was probably the Boston Red Sox of 1994, in the classically easy slugfest of Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball. It was a station to station game: you hit a single or you hit a homerun, basically. The Sox were like that yesterday, without the homeruns; instead, Manny Ramirez hit one 415 feet to the triangle. Even Jason Varitek's near-cheap homerun fell a few feet short of the pole.
It gets hard to write anything when a team is as uncompelling as the Red Sox have been in June and July. The team is a couple games below .500 for these months, and in a reasonable division, they would have a three or four game lead, while in the old two-division league system, they would be a game or two behind. They have two five starters in their rotation right now, one of whom is more like a #6 starter. And Freddy Krueger look-alike Julian Tavarez should know from his movie character look-alike that 6 is a bad number.
WRKO actually had an ad on for Dr. McGillicuddy's Mentholmint Schnapps and Vanilla Schnapps. They also make a cinnamon-flavored whiskey, Fireball, a kinda busted-ass one-bottle Fireball, itself not that good a cocktail. There were also a lot of ads telling me to advertise on Red Sox radio, which isn't that surprising if you think about it. And as the Red Sox continued to hit singles and not score runs, the idea of drinking mentholated schnapps, though still not a pleasant one, seemed a valid enough one.
Luckily, there was Brooklyn Summer Ale in my fridge and I said to myself, "Hey, at least Pedroia had his second straight three-hit game. That's cool." And I drank my beer and fell asleep on the couch.
We got beaten. We got pummeled. We got stuck in a blizzard, and it wasn't from DQ. We got buried in a Rocky Mountain landslide and were forced to shotgun Coors Light until we were sick, then woke up in a pool of our own vomit next to a heaping plate of Rocky Mountain oysters and Mountain tendergroins, with no pants and a Terrell Davis jersey on. We put our #1 and #2 starters out there, and they made the Colorado lineup look like it was still in a humidor-free Coors Field, or maybe the old Mile High when it was even more extreme a pitcher's park. You know, the park where Sid Bream hit the first ever check-swing home run? That's what it was like, with Kaz Matsui (is there any position player time in Colorado can't resurrect?) playing the role of Sid Bream. We couldn't swing our bats for shit and haven't lately. (3.7 runs per game for the month.) Now continuing on...
Walking out of the office down 8th Avenue to grab my lunch, I picked up my cell phone and found I had a voice mail; upon hearing the first part of the message, I thought it was my friend Patrick, but I couldn't understand what the shit he was talking about. This isn't really anything new with Patrick, however, as he is prone to spouting off lots of random shit, including making up stuff in the voice of the Busher from Ring Lardner's You Know Me, Al.
Then this voice identified himself as Cal Ripken Jr., and started pitching me on XM Radio, and how I could listen to it anywhere, even if I had to move in with my parents or something. This seemed like a bit of a low blow, as I am presently making an adequate salary to maintain the lifestyle I am accustomed to living and am unlikely to be moving in with my parents anytime soon. Then he wished my Red Sox, "your passion," luck, "but not too much luck." Then he pulled a shocker on me:
CAL RIPKEN JR: "Let's go Yankees! Let's go Yankees!"
After erasing this demonic presence from my phone and wondering if the message was actually from Billy "Fuck Face" Ripken, I figured out that this was the origin of my confusion. To whichever of my many Yankee fans put me onto this, hardy har har. I know, you're "back in it," so long as "it" is the wild card standings. My congratulations. Now when I find out which one of you pulled this shit on me (why not Derek Jeter?), you're gonna get repeated messages from David Ortiz promoting XM Radio to you. And if anyone else sends me these, I'm going all rolling thunder on everyone I know. There are no innocents.
Good series against Arizona, boring series with Colorado approaching (in anticipatory terms, as interleague continues to unjustify its value), but I'd like to focus on another team today, and another city. The city is Philadelphia, the team, the Phillies. The approaching event: loss #10,000.
The Phillies are on the verge of a historical level of suck, much like our President is and will be by January 2009. But while our president only has eight years to send the country into the suck, the Phillies have had over 100 years to suck, and were it not for that one solitary championship season, the dread would be unimaginable...as it is, the Marlins have more championships than the Phillies in about 1/10 of the time. They've had players like these on some ignonimous, and most infamously, blew a 6.5 game lead with 12 games to go in 1964. That's beyond the Sox's 1978, and to even compare them is like comparing losing a lot of weight on a three-month Atkins diet versus doing the same thing in a couple weeks, with stomach stapling and Dexatrim.
Oh, Philadelphia. The tourist attractions are psuedo-1776, the core hasn't changed since 1976. A city epitomized in its famous cheesesteak, a food one craves, then eats half of and starts feeling ill, then eats the rest of and feels nothing but heartburn, heartache, and regret. No championships for over 20 years will make you do stuff like booing Santa Claus.
The Phillies should be celebrated...for being around a very long time, and ultimately running the A's out of town, sorta. Philadelphia's a nice place, although it's easy to make fun of.
You know what happens when once-great centerfielders come to New York and start to fade away? Mets fans do:
2. Derek Jeter, SS (.360/.411/.480)
Do you think Jeter does the fist pump in bed? I imagine the Jeter fist pump as the egg timer of the young, naive starlet, denoting the end of another prematurely brief session swinging the lumber. No one said fame would be easy, darling.
Yesterday, again showed his dirty side in a really filthy play on Pedroia, reminding us all of the slap play from Game 6 of the 2004 ALCS. I await payback today. Coming out of slump, which gives him a chance to be Mr. May as well as Mr. April. The most excellent and most irrelevant player of a generation.
5. Jorge Posada (.371/.431/.594)
Having a great year. The magic was within you all along, Dumbo.
6. Bobby Abreu, RF (.239/.317/.307)
Slugging percentage isn't much bigger than his batting average. Was missed so badly by the Phillies last year they went on a tear without him and almost took the wild card. Not exactly a big presence at the plate anymore. At least Eddie Gaedel could always draw walks. 7. Jason Giambi, DH (.268/.396/.449)
Drug-addled womanizer who can't play a lick of first base with deteriorating numbers. In other words, my favorite Yankee, although I sure miss Ruben Rivera.
8. Robinson Cano, 2B (.248/.288/.370)
An overrated book, an overrated player.
9. Doug Mientkiewicz, 1B (.210/.286/.360)
A golden god. Clearly. Would some guy with Photo Shop skills and too much time on his hands lie to you?
