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.