Saturday, May 15, 2010

Game 36 - Red Sox v. Tigers (@Comerica)

Let's hope this was the beginning of a hot streak for Big Papi, 2HR (and from what I read today on Boston.com, they were blasts). The Red Sox offense has been a pleasant surprise so far this season even with very little contributions from Papi, but getting his bat back into the swing of things (pardon the pun!) would go a long way to making this team tougher as we start to head into the summer.

Clay Buchholz's start was effective, although a little ugly when looking at the 5 BB and 111 pitches it took him to get through 6 1/3rd innings. On the bright side, this is a good sign that he can still be effective even without his control (which I've written about a few times already this season). For comparison, his strike/pitch ratio for this game was only .576, which is well below the 0.61-ish number that it seems come with his best starts. But the fact that he still only allowed 1 ER and 3 H against a reasonable good offense is encouraging. Actually now that I look the Tigers aren't all that great at the plate, they're 14th in MLB in runs scored despite having good starts from Cabrera, Jackson, Damon and Ordonez. Looking a little deeper they're team OBP is very good (4th best in MLB), but their power isn't comparable at 12th in MLB. Given that, the 5BB makes sense...not so bad after all Clay!

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