Game 23 - Red Sox v. Orioles (@Camden)

Another strong start from a Red Sox starter. Over their last 3 games, the starters have gone 22 innings and only given up 3 ER, so thankfully, the rotation appears to be turning into what we had expected coming out of spring training (doubly so once Beckett gets himself straightened out. Biggest issue that I see right now is the bullpen and lack of consistency. There are nights where Bard/Papelbon and one of Okajima/Ramirez/Delcarmen are lights out, but there have been too many times early in the season where these guys have given up leads.

After typing that I went and poked around on mlb.com, espn.com and fangraphs.com to see if there were any well established (and already calculated) stats that help analyze reliever effectiveness. Not surprisingly, neither mlb.com nor espn.com had anything, but fangraphs.com does have something called "WPA Relievers", for a good definition and example, using Jacoby Ellsbury no less, check out this page. Basically they take all kinds of factors into account (score, point in the game, contribution to winning/losing) and then add that up to get a players WPA, it can apply to any player but the nice thing about fangraphs is that they have a view that allows you to see it for just relievers. As of this writing, Papelbon and Bard were in the top 6 in the majors, with the rest of the pen in the negative and Okajima being he worst of the current guys. Interesting to see that worst in the majors are some pretty notable names (in reverse order from last)

Trevor Hoffman
Frank Francisco
Mike Gonzalez
Chris Perez

All of whom are (last time I checked), closers for their respective teams.

Game 22 - Red Sox v. Blue Jays (@SkyDome)

Now that's what I'm talking about. I caught the score while sitting in traffic on 405 south today, saw it was 1-0 in the 7th and Lester pitching well, very good to see him rounding into form (both for the Sox and for my fantasy league team which has now seen back-to-back strong starts from Buchholz and Lester). Watching the clips on mlb.com just now, I saw 4 very good pitches from Lester, changeups and sliders early, 95 mph fastballs in the middle and some good curve balls towards the end. No wonder the Jays only had one hit off of him.

Almost as good as Lester, was the performances from Bard (1IP and 3K) and Papelbon (a clean 9th with 1K), exactly the way we had hoped the Red Sox would be winning games this year. Lester's performance shouldn't come as a total surprise since he's done well against Toronto over the last 3 years (3.03 ERA with an opponents batting average of only .205), but yes, good to see.

And hey, look at that, we're back at .500 (11-11) on the season now!

Game 21 - Red Sox v. Blue Jays (@SkyDome)

Seems that I might be onto something with Buchholz and the throwing strikes analysis I did in a previous post. In tonight's game he had a 0.683 strikes/pitches ratio, his second best number since the start of 2009, and tonight's game was a gem. I'm sure that my picking up Lyle Overbay (who had a big game yesterday) had something to do with it too (jinxed myself!), but nonetheless another strong start from the team's #5 starter (he's actually pitching like the #1 right now).

Something I had meant to write about yesterday, but didn't get to in my hard hitting analysis of Francona's umpire argument style was what a dump the SkyDome looks like these days. Watching the highlights, actually reminds me a bit of watching the Sox play at the old Exhibition Stadium. Watching these highlights from yesterday and tonight, I'm half expecting to hear Ned Martin and Bob Montgomery doing a promo for 'Ask the Manager' on channel 38 in between innings...gripping stuff.

Game 20 - Red Sox v. Blue Jays (@SkyDome)

Yikes, that was an ugly game (not only for the Red Sox, but both of my fantasy league teams too, which had Beckett starting today). Definitely glad to see them score a bunch of runs, but what's the deal with the pitching, especially Beckett? He now has a 7.22 ERA for the month, exactly what he had last year at the end of April, but still ridiculously high for a guy that is supposed to be the ace of the staff and just signed a long term deal. As I've said numerous times already, it's too early to panic, but c'mon!

While watching the highlights of tonight's game I watched the clip of Youkilis being called out at home, and Francona's argument with the home plate ump (who seemed to have blown the call). I noticed Francona doing his finger pointing thing and started wondering if he has a standard rap he lays on umps when he goes out to argue (at least to warm them up). Maybe it's just me but it looks like he's saying something like 'ok, that's one bad call tonight, that better be the last one' (that's the G rated version by the way). It would be pretty funny if he said the same thing everytime, and the umps know its coming so they just tune him out until he's done, then let him walk away and back to the game.

On the field, some strong stuff from Delcarmen, Bard and Papelbon (5 scoreless innings), and big games at the plate from Scutaro, Varitek and Beltre. While Lyle Overbay (who I KNEW was going to heat up, yet didn't pick him up in my fantasy league last night for unknown reasons) had a huge night too. Reason I was expecting Overbay to have a good run was that his average was down around the .150 range and he's just better than that (not much, but better) so figured he'd have a hot streak coming. Let's hope that same theory holds for JJ Hardy (who yes, is on both of my teams :) )

Game 19 - Red Sox v. Orioles (@Fenway)

A sweep against the Orioles would have been nice, but winning 2 out of three (and 4 out of their last 6) at least gives hope that the slide we saw a week ago is coming to an end. Also on the 'good news' side is the upcoming road trip has trips to Toronto and Baltimore, teams that the Red Sox should be beating. If they can manage to go 4-2 over the next 6 that would put then at 12-13, so let's home for a 5-1 road trip that puts them over the .500 mark (hopefully the last time they cross that this year!)

It's also encouraging that I'm actually looking forward to checking the scores again. I was at the park with my family today, chasing my son on his bike and in between shouts of 'look out!' and cringing as he was headed towards a trash can, I found a few spare minutes to check in on the game. This is a big departure from a week ago when the Sox games were more upsetting to me, than hills are to my daughter on her bike.

On a semi-related note, I caught the end of the Celtics/Heat game today, having seen the scores over the past 2 games and wanting to see if the Celtics did indeed have the look of a champion (as at least some of my friends have described them). Well hard to say they're championship caliber when they miss easy opportunities in the last 2 minutes to score 7 points (3 missed free throws by Ray Allen, 2 missed free throws by Garnett and Rondo missing a total gimme layup). Let's hope the Celtics close it out in 5 so they get some downtime before round two.

Game 18 - Red Sox v. Orioles (@Fenway)

Boy did I pick the perfect time to go out to dinner tonight. I had the ESPN Gamecast up during the 6th and top half of the 7th before we left for the local Mexican restaurant, things weren't looking so good so I didn't even bother checking the score when we got there (I found a good score app for my Blackberry earlier in the day, gives me scores across sports in a single app, updated in real-time, and best of all it's free).

Anyways back to the game, Scutaro's 3 run homer in the 7th looked very close to being touched by a fan in the monster seats to me. I only saw one replay of it so hard to say with any certainty, but it was close. Varitek continues to amaze, 4 HR already when only playing part time? I'm trying not to get too excited by this since it's so early, but it would be a great development for the Sox if Varitek could really shine in the backup role. It would give them more flexibility for the DH role to wait out Papi's struggles as well give them a defensive upgrade behind the plate more often than they were expecting. I know Varitek wasn't necessarily great at preventing opponents' baserunning, but can't be much worse than Martinez (who has only caught 7% of runners this year, and 14% last year between Boston + Cleveland), and we all know how much pitchers like to throw to Varitek.

I actually found it interesting that Martinez has put up some pretty 'caught stealing %' good numbers over the years, in 2008 he caught 37% of runners and in 2007 the number was 32%. It's entirely possible that Martinez is suffering from the Red Sox pitching philosophy, which has always been to focus on the man at the plate at the cost of the baserunner, but I know there's always been some talk about Martinez being a bit of a defensive liability at catcher (talk that's backed up by baseball-reference.com's defensive stats on Victor), but apparently its less about baserunning and more about the other facets of catching.

Game 17 - Red Sox v. Orioles (@Fenway)

It's always good when Baltimore comes to town, and it's even better when Papi gets his first home run of the season and it's still April.

Lester clearly wasn't super sharp, but compared to the messy start he's had, this was a good outing. High pitch count (113 pitches in less than 6 full innings), and too many baserunners (8 via 4 hits and 4 walks). The walks stand out the most since Baltimore isn't exactly a patient lineup, they're the 4th worst team in the major at drawing walks. But all in all, Lester gave them a chance to win which is what's important and hopefully this start helps him turnaround the dreadful start. Especially since he's on one of my fantasy league teams and I need some starting pitching to come around next week!

One thing I noticed while watching highlights and live look-ins on MLB Network tonight (how did I ever survive without a 24hr baseball channel?), seemed that lots of teams were going with the dark jerseys tonight. I guess I'm a traditionalist, but I'm not a fan of all the alternate/special stuff. It doesn't bother me as much when I see teams like the A's wearing black jerseys (they need any help they can get to make some money), but do the Red Sox really need to do it too? One of the few (maybe only?) things I've admired the Yankees for is their sticking to tradition with uniforms. I mean even in the 1970s, they still had pretty standard and traditional uniforms:



compared to the crummy stuff the Red Sox wore:



And speaking of bad taste, the Bing site today had a picture of a turtle on it, not exactly the right image to display next to your search box to give users a feeling that you've got a blazingly fast search engine. At least they give the turtle sunglasses and a cane.

Game 16 - Red Sox v. Rangers (@Fenway)

Wow, nice start from Buchholz tonight! I just watched the highlights on mlb.com and he had some nasty stuff, good slider, wicked curve and saw his fastball hit 97mph on at least one pitch. Clay now has a 2.70 ERA and 18 K's, good for top 20 in the AL pitching.

This kind of loss doesn't bother me nearly as much since it's "to form" with what the moves were in the offseason. They got great pitching tonight but for whatever reason (didn't see enough clips of Wilson to see if it was a case of good pitching or poor hitting), they didn't do much offensively. And when you consider Ellsbury and Cameron are out, this isn't so bad IMO.

Back to Buchholz. I've heard a common complaint is that he doesn't trust his stuff enough, not enough strikes. So I'll start keeping an eye on his 'strike percentage' per start (# of strikes/# of pitches), which for tonight is 0.67. To put the number into some context, that's his top ratio of his three starts this year and his ratio for all of 2009 was 0.615384615, with the following per-start breakdown:

Ratio (Strikes/Pitches) ERA
----------------------------
0.708860759 3.74
0.663043478 5.02
0.641509434 3.92
0.640776699 1.59
0.633027523 3.21
0.626168224 3.52
0.626168224 4.38
0.622222222 3.72
0.615384615 4.4
0.600000000 4.45
0.592105263 6.05
0.587628866 3.66
0.585714286 4.21
0.574468085 3.99
0.568421053 3.49
0.561904762 5.33

While there isn't a strong correlation between good strike/pitches ratios to good ERA's there is at least an indication that it's something worth keeping an eye on, given the relatively small sample size so far. I'll also try and get similar data at some point to see how much of a correlation there is with other pitchers too.

Game 15 - Red Sox v. Rangers (@Fenway)

It sure is nice to play a team that is struggling as much as the Sox are. While there (once again) was plenty wrong with the performance tonight, its good to see a couple of wins strung together, especially since they were late/last at-bat ones.

Beckett's outing (7 IP and 7 ER) was ugly, not sure why he pitched the 7th? Not that Josh Hamilton is the same guy that made the All Star team and finished 7th in the AL MVP voting in 2008, but why not go to the bullpen once the tying run came to the plate and Beckett's pitch count was getting up to 100 or so pitches? It wasn't like he was lights out tonight (12 baserunners in 7 innings), and with guys in the pen pitching well over the last few days, seems like it was time to make a move.

That being said, very happy for Mike Lowell to get in the lineup and have a big impact. Maybe the combination of Lowell in the spring and Papi in the summer (if he can heat up like he did last year), can put up reasonable DH numbers this year. Speaking of Papi, I was getting some coffee in the kitchen at work the other day and a fellow New Englander and Sox fan was talking to another guy about baseball. The other guy made some comment about how Papi was washed up and I quickly blurted out something like 'oh yeah, well he hit 29 home runs with 99 RBI last year!'. The funny thing is, I have no idea how accurate those numbers are, but given the conviction with which I delivered my statement, nobody questioned me at all. It's one of the interesting things that I've noticed about living in Seattle...there's lots of nice people here, almost too nice. So nice that people rarely question things, and even when they do, it's done in a 'hmm, well maybe we should investigate a little more to see if thats correct' instead of saying 'wtf, are you kidding me? he only hit 28 home runs last year you dingbat!'

Game 14 - Red Sox v. Rangers (@Fenway)

Yay!

Clearly Theo + the Trio are reading my blog since they put both Cameron and Ellsbury on the DL to make room for some real outfielders (sorry Bill Hall). And while I can't take the credit for the Darnell McDonald callup, I'll take credit for the DL moves that made space for McDonald.

And oh yeah, they won a game today to break out of that 5 game losing streak.

First the two-run home run in the 8th to tie it, then a blast to left with the bases loaded in the 9th to win it, well done Darnell, welcome to Red Sox lore (if they reel off a nice 8-2 streak over their next 10 for example).

On the downside, I almost drove off of 405 today on my way home trying to count how many steals the Rangers had racked up by the 5th. I kept squinting at the summary trying to decipher the actual count, surely Vlad Guerrero didn't have 2 steals in one game?!? Well he did indeed, and please don't call me Shirley.

Game 13 - Red Sox v. Rays (@Fenway)

On the bright side, 5 2/3 innings of shutout ball from the bullpen today.

On the not-so-bright side, everything else.

Great quote from Pedroia today ""When you don't show up, you're going to get beat," he said. "Doesn't matter if it's the Rays or (bleeping) Brookline High."

And that's exactly how it feels right now, they just aren't showing up. The short highlights I saw on mlb.com (which by the way is my preferred way to catch up on games since there aren't video ads to sit through, like on espn), just showed an utterly incompetent outfield of Hermida, Hall and Drew screwing up play after play, turning outs into singles, and singles into doubles. Yes, I know it's early, but management has to do something about the OF, there's no way you can let Bill Hall go out there again and embarass himself. It's time to (a) put someone, either Cameron or Ellsbury, on the DL so they can call up a legit OF to play center and (b) do something about the lineup. The latter is clearly harder because there just aren't many options given the short bench they're playing with, but I'd get Lowell in there somewhere (either 3B or DH) on a regular basis, not every day, just get him regular time, probably at Papi's expense. Hell, get Bob Zupcic out of retirement and give him a shot in center, it can't get much worse.

Game 12 - Red Sox v. Rays (@Fenway)

I turned on the game around the 8th (it was on TBS, had checked in early, but had stuff to do around the house), and I saw the score was 7-0. My first thought was 'geez, I hope they at least have a hit'. It's that bad right now, I'm almost expecting them to be no-hit. Maybe it was the fact that it was Garza, who surpsingly is only 5-2 with a 3.23 ERA in his career against the Red Sox. Or maybe it was the even-more-anemic-than-expected offense (18th best in the majors in runs scored, despite being 6th best in OPS). Or maybe it was just that sinking feeling that comes when your team is in a bad rut. And they clearly are in a bad rut right now, falling to 4-8 and 5 GB of the first place Yankees and Rays.

While watching the 8th, my wife asked me 'so what's the deal, is their hitting bad or their pitching', to which I simply replied 'yes'. We all expected the hitting to be a weakness, but right now, they're the second worst team in baseball at drawing walks. That's a surprise since as a team they have a good OBP, and with hitters like Youkilis, Drew and Pedroia in the lineup, you'd expect to see a fair number of walks. On the pitching side, it's been a little bad luck (errors over the past few days as examples), but mostly just ineffectiveness as they have a team ERA of 4.65 which is 11/14 in the AL, not good for team built on pitching + defense.

It's obviously very early in the season and I think they'll be right in the thick of it at the end of the season, but this is getting hard to watch right now. Might actually be good to be on the other coast until the ship gets righted.

Game 11 - Red Sox v. Rays (@Fenway)

Geez this is starting to get ugly. I know it's only 11 games into the season, but the Sox are losing games in unexpected ways (based on the offseason moves). After losing the previous game in extra innings, and the only reason it went extra innings was because of sloppy defense (first an error by Scutaro that allows Crawford to get on base, then a botched chopper by Beltre that allowed Crawford to score), they lose tonight due at least in part to a bad play by Cameron in center. Hmm, hold on a sec:

Error by Scutaro in Friday night's game
Bad play by Beltre in Friday night's game
Error by Cameron in Saturday night's game

Oh yeah, those are the three guys they signed to shore up the defense this year! I haven't actually seen the Cameron play yet, in the bottom of the 9th, the mlb.com Gameday feature went kerplunk and stopped updating after Pedroia's out, and it seems to still be stuck in that mode so I can't get to the wrapup for the video highlights. But in his last 266 games, Cameron only made 5 errors.

The bats came alive a bit in the 7th, I had the Gamecast going then and 'saw' Pedroia's and Youk's 2R homers, and really thought I had made the right choice to skip watching 'The Hurt Locker' with my wife, but then the rally fizzled in the 8th and 9th and the Sox go into Sunday's game at 4-7, already 4 GB behind the Yankees.

For the record, since she' still watching the movie (with generous use of fast forward), I'm at least feeling pretty good about skipping the movie, got my blog updated and some work stuff done (geeking out on UML diagrams in Visual Studio 2010), so it's not all bad.

And oh yeah, how about them Celtics!

Game 10 - Red Sox v. Rays (@Fenway)

Some good stuff from the first 8 1/2 innings of the game:

Really good: Beckett pitched very well against a good lineup.
Kinda good: Papi isn't the most pathetic hitter in the regular lineup (No matter what, I'll always have a soft spot for Ortiz over Drew for obvious reasons)
Shocking: The captain now has 3 HR in 7 AB this year for an eye popping 1.714 SLG percentage...that's insane! Should we be reading more into this, like if the Sox had a half decent backup catcher over the past 3 years, Varitek would still be an All Star caliber catcher?

I'll finish off the update on game 10 along with (hopefully) an update on Game 11 tomorrow too, but I hear Boston is in for lots of rain this weekend. Ironically, Seattle is sunny!

So much for the sunny optimism...3-1 loss in this game after the resumed it on Saturday. Has Delcarmen actually peaked? I've never been very high on him, so it's entirely possible that I'm just being premature, but c'mon, a 2 run homer to Pat Freaking Burrell? Burrell numbers in his time in Tampa (.221/.315/.367 and .185 /.267 /.259 AVG/OBP/SLG for 2009 and 2010 respectively) are downright Manny Alexander-esque. Although in Burrell's defense, nobody has found steroid syringes in his Mercedes.

Game 9 - Red Sox v. Twins (@Target)

Yikes...was Liriano really that good today or did the Sox hitters just make him look like he never had Tommy John surgery? Most disconcerting thing from this start was the low number of walks given that Liriano walked 5 in 6 innings against the White Sox in his first start of the season, and this Sox lineup is built around being patient (save for new guys like Beltre and Cameron).

BTW, guys at mlb.com, your video player is broken. I just queued up the highlights from today's Red Sox game and hit pause so it would load up while I was taking care of something for work. When I came back and unpaused it, the player went ahead to (what I assume was) the next highlight of the Marlins game. Speaking of bugs, how about the three errors from the defense today? I give Bill Hall a pass on the ball he flubbed in center (although now that I look up his defensive stats, he actually played 130 games in CF for the Brewers in 2007). That being said, the errors weren't the problem today, just no hitting or patience (less than 100 pitches thrown by Liriano in 7 innings).

Hopefully the Sox were just eager to get home for this weekends' series against Tampa Bay...

Game 8 - Red Sox v. Twins (@Target)

Nice start from Lackey tonight, even though he didn't seem to pitch as well (read some coverage on mlb.com where he said he had to grind it out), he only gave up 2ER in 6 2/3rd innings against a pretty good Twins lineup. I especially liked the quotes from Francona and Lackey about how Francona thought he might get chewed out by Lackey when he went to pull him in the 7th. His ground-ball/fly-ball ratio was low (.63) compared to his career averages (0.83ish), but it's a small sample size. Might be an interesting stat to keep an eye on in terms of good starts having higher ground-ball/fly-ball ratios and 'struggle' starts have lower ratios.

Offensively, Pedroia got his 4th home run, which ties him for 4th in the AL (along with former Red Sox shortstop, Alex Gonzalez...why can't we get players like that?).

On a personal note, we had dinner at the Cheesecake Factory today, and despite our waiter having a Yankees logo on his tie (thanks to my nephew for pointing this out), I thought he did a nice job with the service. I'm not sure I understand why the Cheesecake Factory feels the need to have a booklet for a menu (do they really need 10+ different kinds of chicken dishes?) or give huge portions when there's a whole kid-fingerprint-covered-glass-case (mine included) stuffed with super filling deserts waiting for you after your meal, but all in all it was a decent meal. Also showed how handy it is to have kids sometimes, since it got me away from the table with the rest of the family to go and check out the desert options :)

Game 7 - Red Sox v. Twins (@Target)

The bad news: Lester didn't pitch well (again), that line looks downright John Wasdin-esque.

The good news: Big Papi got a hit! I've been reading the comments on stories over at boston.com and there's more than a few fans that are calling for Papi to get benched in favor of Lowell or Hermida, and while I can understand it from a stats point of view, it's hard to admit that Papi might be done since it was just a few years ago that he was the greatest thing to happen to Boston since Tom Brady. I hope he turns it around just a little, so he can at least end his career on a medium note (not even asking for a high note, just not a I-hit-.140-for-two-months-and-got-benched-for-a-guy-that-got-traded-then-returned-back-as-damaged-goods-note. Ortiz deserves better IMO.

Also on the personal good news front, I have both Mauer and Kubel on one of my fantasy league teams, so if anyone is going to rock Lester (who I have on a different fantasy team), might as well be my own guys.

Also good news, Visual Studio 2010 got officially announced today, I'm downloading it as I blog. I've been running the RC candidate at work for the past few weeks and found the UI to be a vast improvement, looks nice and way more responsive. Also, the install experience was good. I'm looking forward to using it for something other than work item tracking and reviewing code :)

Game 6 - Red Sox v. Royals (@Kauffman)

My wife and I went to see 'Hot Tub Time Machine' today, so I only caught a couple of quick updates on my phone. Seems that Ramon Ramirez needs to get his act straightened out, but at least the offense is showing encouraging signs early in the season (especially important given all the concern there was about run production before the season started).

Now back to the movie...I thought it was pretty good. It did well on my personal 'pillars of movie greatness' in that it was dumb, funny and short. I should come up with some kind of ranking system for this, maybe:

Dumb(0-3 stooges), where 0 means I had to think alot, and 3 means it was on par with the best episodes that featured Shemp, who was always in my favorite Three Stooges episodes as a kid.

Funny (0-10 LOLs) - I don't generally laugh out loud all that much, so if a movie can get me to 6 or 7, that's pretty good. The 10+ range is reserved for classics like Valley Girl or Fletch (both of which I freely admit were a lot funnier when I was younger). The genius behind using LOLs is that I actually look somewhat relevant since the Stooges thing dates me a bit :)

Short (1.5 - 2hrs) - Maybe I'll come up with a more clever way of capturing a movie's length (or lack thereof), but using the actual clock time at least sets the bar for where I think a movie should land. Sure I've seen movies longer than 2hrs that I liked, but there's a decreasing chance of me liking a movie the longer it is.

Ok, so where does Hot Tub Time Machine fall?

2.5 Stooges, 8 LOLs and 1hr 40min - in other words, I recommend it. Probably my biggest complaint with it was that I felt like there were a few times where things were out of sync with the time period. Having grown up in the 80s, starting high school in the year the movie took place, 1986, there were some musical references that didn't feel quite right. Most notably the whole Poison thing, seems like 1986 was too early for anyone to care about Poison (a statement that you could probably make about any year now that I think of it).

Anyways, Red Sox are now 3-3 and headed to Minnesota, bring on the Twins!

Game 5 - Red Sox v. Royals (@Kauffman)

I just watched the highlight of Jeremy Hermida taking Gil Meche deep, man those short clips can make any guy look like a hall of famer. Check out the sweet swing from Hermida (and yeah, I heard Remy say it was a hanging curve ball, but come on...he pasted that thing!).

I followed a little of the game on MLB's gameday before dinner tonight, seems like Beckett was better, but then again who wouldn't be better after going from the Yankees lineup to the Royals lineup. The 105 pitches + 71 for strikes is decent, but would have liked to see more than the 4k's against the Royals, but since MLB.com just told me that the Royals actually finished middle of the pack last year in team strikeouts, maybe they aren't as much of a bunch of free swingers as I thought.

The Sox also didn't have their 'A' lineup in there tonight (with Varitek catching, Hermida in LF and Lowell at 3B), but still got 8 runs on the board against Greinke + bullpen. It will be interesting to see if Varitek becomes a personal catcher for Beckett. Since I have Beckett in both of my fantasy leagues, I'll take whatever I can get to get max value out of him this year, oh, and yeah, if he wins some games for the Sox that would be good too.

Game 4 - Red Sox v. Royals (@Kauffman?)

(disclaimer, I have no idea what the Royals stadium is called these days, so I'm sticking with Kauffman, which come to think of it, I'm not even sure it was ever named that).

My method for updates today, box scores and video highlights from mlb.com (get used to it, I think it's going to be a dry spell on actually catching games on TV). Needless to say, I gave the TV a raspberry when I caught the score earlier tonight (flipping between watching Olivia Munn on Attack of the show and some Food Networking show with Rachel Ray...and yes, my wife was in the room). Just watched the three highlights they have posted at mlb.com, must have been a great game if one of the highlights is of Chris Getz bunting while out of the batters box.

Looking at the box score, Wakefield pitched a heck of a game, but the pen gave it up...let's hope it's not a trend, but yeah, this pen isn't impressive yet. I love the line for Tejeda (reliever for the Royals), he threw 14 pitches with 3 strikes, walking three in a third of an inning...yet didn't give up a run. Way to squander an opportunity there guys.

Since I don't have any pithy analysis of the game, I'll digress a bit and do an analysis of the new mlb.com site. While poking around at the box score and video highlights, I noticed that the header changes between pages, isn't it web design 101 to keep that header consistent across pages so it serves as an anchor (aka, don't make me think)? I mean it's annoying enough that MLB feels the need to remind us all over the place that they're 'powered by' Sun and 'powered by' Adobe, but c'mon guys, hire a decent web designer!

Game 3 - Red Sox v. Yankees (@ Fenway)

I only caught one at bat on tv tonight, it was Swisher against Bard
in the eighth. Bard to me looks like a guy that needs another pitch,
either something with movement or offspeed (where offspeed is defined
as under 90mph).

Of course the biggest question for me tonight is how the sox only got
one run off of Pettite or how Martinez muffed the throw from Drew on
that tying run in the eighth.

At least Lackey apparently had a good outing...and I get to try
blogging from my phone while out of town in Portland!

--
Sent from my mobile device

Game 2 - Red Sox v. Yankees (@ Fenway)

Matchup: Burnett v. Lester

Fresh off signing Beckett to an extension (is there a team with a better outlook on pitching than the Red Sox?), the Sox entered game 2 of the season with a favorable Lester v. Burnett matchup.

To me, Burnett is one of the top 2 'most likely to disappoint' in 2010 candidates on the Yankees (the other being Andy Pettite, but Pettite at least has the age factor to fall back on). I actually don't think Burnett will pitch poorly this year as much as I can't see him throwing as many innings:

Year
2004 120.0
2005 209.0
2006 135.2
2007 165.2
2008 221.1
2009 207.0

Maybe I'm overly pessimistic/anti-Yankees, but I'm looking for Burnett to top out at ~170 innings this year. Ok, now on to tonights game...

Due to getting home around 6.30 (bad traffic here in Bellevue, I'm sure I'll end up ranting about Seattle drivers soon, over/under is game 20, place your bets now), I only caught a few innings tonight on TV. I have Lester on one of my fantasy league teams and was disappointed by the performance tonight, but man, that Yankees lineup is tough, so I can't blame him too much. I caught most of the 7th and 8th, saw Swisher put up what seemed like a 10+ pitch at bat, and then Nick Johnson walk in a run (I know, shocking that Nick Johnson walked)...and saw Cano's blast to right off of Atchison. My quick summary of the game was that the key's for both teams (bullpens) determined the outcome again, yesterday it was the Sox with good performances from Okajima, Bard + Papelbon, and tonight it was the Yankees turn with Aceves, Robertson, Marte, Chamberlain and Rivera.

Looking forward to tomorrow's game (1) because we get to see Lackey's first start for the Sox and (2) I'm going to try mobile blogging!

Game 1 - Red Sox v. Yankees

Thanks to it being opening day (or evening) and a game between the Sox and Yankees, I was able to watch this one on TV. Overall I was pleasantly surprised by the contributions of the new guys (Beltre, Scutaro and Cameron) at the plate. We've all heard plenty about their defense, but the at bats they put together against relatively good pitching were impressive (Sabathia, while not sharp, was still pretty good....can't say the same for the Yankees bullpen). Scutaro especially stuck out for me, probably because I actually have some hope that he'll be a relatively good offensive SS this year. I can't put much stock in either Cameron on Beltre's nights since they have longer track records in the majors (can you believe Beltre is already in his 11th season, and he's only 30?!?).

On the pitching side, I missed Beckett's implosion, but he didn't look sharp to me after he retired the first 5 batters of the game. I also completely missed Okajima's appearance (having kids that go to bed around 7.45 means this will be a recurring theme throughout the season :) ), but Ramirez (not so good), Bard (good) and Papelbon (very good), pitched as well as I could hope.