After my 3 game hiatus (without a good reason other than tired, daughter's ballet recital and just catching up today), the Red Sox find themselves 4 games out of first and 2 games behind the Yankees for the Wild Card.
They closed out May with the second best winning percentage (.621) in the AL, only behind Toronto.
So far in June (and yes, it's very early), they have the second best winning percentage in the AL (.714), only behind the Angels. And maybe just as importantly, they're the best team in baseball in run differential so far at +25.
They're first in runs scored in June (also now first for the season!), and only 17th in the majors in team ERA. I'm pretty surprised by both of these since its felt like quite a few relatively close games, or at least shutouts. But I guess those games against the A's to start the month skewed the numbers a bit higher than my brain thought they would be.
I admit this is a pretty boring stretch of games (against not good, or even interesting teams), so it's a bit hard to motivate myself to write about the games one way or another. Maybe I need a no-hitter to get me going...
Monday, June 7, 2010
Friday, June 4, 2010
Game 56 - Red Sox v. Orioles (@Camden)
Clay Buchholz has been one of the two best starters in the AL so far this year.
I can't say that I thought I'd be typing that when I started writing this blog, but there it is, and its true. After his complete game shutout of the Orioles tonight, Buchholz is now tied with David Price for wins (at 8) and trails only Price in ERA for AL starters (to be fair, I definitely didn't think the Price/Buchholz combo would be leading the AL pitching!). Clay's strikes/pitches ratio tonight was 0.643, which correlates nicely with the 5 hitter he threw.
At the plate, the Red Sox offense continues to hum along at a pace that is certainly surprising me, and probably alot of other people too, especially when you consider how much time they've played with Cameron + Ellsbury on the DL. I shudder when I see a box score that has Bill Hall playing center, but when your starter is as effective as Buchholz was tonight, who's playing where doesn't matter nearly as much as it did earlier in the season when the starters were getting regularly lit up, and guys like Hall were being asked to actually play defense on a regular basis.
This was a good start to the weekend series, a series that the Red Sox should really sweep, and keep putting some early-season pressure on the leaders in the division (would also be nice if Toronto started to fall off the pace a bit, I've been very surprised that they've sustained their winning ways this far into the season).
I can't say that I thought I'd be typing that when I started writing this blog, but there it is, and its true. After his complete game shutout of the Orioles tonight, Buchholz is now tied with David Price for wins (at 8) and trails only Price in ERA for AL starters (to be fair, I definitely didn't think the Price/Buchholz combo would be leading the AL pitching!). Clay's strikes/pitches ratio tonight was 0.643, which correlates nicely with the 5 hitter he threw.
At the plate, the Red Sox offense continues to hum along at a pace that is certainly surprising me, and probably alot of other people too, especially when you consider how much time they've played with Cameron + Ellsbury on the DL. I shudder when I see a box score that has Bill Hall playing center, but when your starter is as effective as Buchholz was tonight, who's playing where doesn't matter nearly as much as it did earlier in the season when the starters were getting regularly lit up, and guys like Hall were being asked to actually play defense on a regular basis.
This was a good start to the weekend series, a series that the Red Sox should really sweep, and keep putting some early-season pressure on the leaders in the division (would also be nice if Toronto started to fall off the pace a bit, I've been very surprised that they've sustained their winning ways this far into the season).
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Game 55 - Red Sox v. A's (@Fenway)
I'm not sure if it's the fact that they've been playing against generally weaker teams, or the break (and eventual poor performance) from the Celtics, too much stuff going on at work, or just a sneak peek at what the dog days of summer will be like, but man is it hard to get up for writing this blog lately.
I flipped over to the MLB network during a commercial break of the Celtics/Lakers game tonight (I needed something to take the pain away from watching the Celtics get manhandled by the Lakers, especially by the Laker's defense....yikes, did I really just type that?). I saw the 'full highlights' including two monster shots from Curt Suzuki and two guys getting thrown out at the plate (first Victor Martinez, then Darnell MacDonald). It's hard to pinpoint exactly why, but I feel like this team is pretty uninteresting right now. They've righted the ship since the poor start, but they're not quite red hot either, even the stats from May that I wrote about a few days ago were good, but not spectacular. Maybe it was the fact that after the super slow start (which was a good story in a weird way), I was expecting either a continued decline or a massive turnaround. And while there have been some players with massive turnarounds (Big Papi and Jon Lester to name two), it hasn't happened as a team to the point where it's gripping me to catch the score every day to see who's doing what.
It may actually be related to the Celtics season, where they were completely flat for the last 50 games of the regular season, and then have been on complete fire through the playoffs (well, except for tonight). There's part of me that's waiting for that same kind of explosion from the Red Sox, but it hasn't happened yet.
A weekend series against the Orioles certainly doesn't seem to be the kind of thing that will turn me around...
I flipped over to the MLB network during a commercial break of the Celtics/Lakers game tonight (I needed something to take the pain away from watching the Celtics get manhandled by the Lakers, especially by the Laker's defense....yikes, did I really just type that?). I saw the 'full highlights' including two monster shots from Curt Suzuki and two guys getting thrown out at the plate (first Victor Martinez, then Darnell MacDonald). It's hard to pinpoint exactly why, but I feel like this team is pretty uninteresting right now. They've righted the ship since the poor start, but they're not quite red hot either, even the stats from May that I wrote about a few days ago were good, but not spectacular. Maybe it was the fact that after the super slow start (which was a good story in a weird way), I was expecting either a continued decline or a massive turnaround. And while there have been some players with massive turnarounds (Big Papi and Jon Lester to name two), it hasn't happened as a team to the point where it's gripping me to catch the score every day to see who's doing what.
It may actually be related to the Celtics season, where they were completely flat for the last 50 games of the regular season, and then have been on complete fire through the playoffs (well, except for tonight). There's part of me that's waiting for that same kind of explosion from the Red Sox, but it hasn't happened yet.
A weekend series against the Orioles certainly doesn't seem to be the kind of thing that will turn me around...
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Game 54 - Red Sox v. A's (@Fenway)
Good news, the Red Sox have now won 4 in a row over teams that they should be beating (Royals and A's) and have moved ahead of Toronto for 3rd in the AL East (and 2.5 games out of the Wild Card).
Better news, Dice-k was actually fairly effective today. He wasn't lights out by any means, but the 7K's and no walks are encouraging coming from a guy that tends to most of his pitches nibble around the plate. He seems to be pitching more aggressively this year, although interestingly enough, his strike/pitches ratio is only 0.61, a number that's a low for him over his 4 year career with the Red Sox. His walks/9innings are down too, which leads me to think that he's getting more movement on his pitches which is leading to getting hitters to swing at more pitches out of the strike zone?
Best news, my team's computers arrived today :)
Better news, Dice-k was actually fairly effective today. He wasn't lights out by any means, but the 7K's and no walks are encouraging coming from a guy that tends to most of his pitches nibble around the plate. He seems to be pitching more aggressively this year, although interestingly enough, his strike/pitches ratio is only 0.61, a number that's a low for him over his 4 year career with the Red Sox. His walks/9innings are down too, which leads me to think that he's getting more movement on his pitches which is leading to getting hitters to swing at more pitches out of the strike zone?
Best news, my team's computers arrived today :)
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Game 53 - Red Sox v. A's (@Fenway)
When does John Lackey stop sucking?
Sure he got the win tonight, but he gave up 4 runs and 12 hits against the 4th worst offense in the AL, that's hardly a great start from the guy the Red Sox gave a huge contract to in the offseason.
Thanks to some experiences at work over the past few days, I'm seeing alot of things through corporate tainted glasses, including the Red Sox. For example, I have a couple of developers on my team that need new hardware to start work on a new project. Seems simple enough right? I asked about getting the hardware about 2 weeks ago, and even offered to stroll to the store down the street to buy the machines and bring them back. For some reason (that I'm still not entirely clear on), this was frowned upon so I went through the proper channels figuring that it can't take much more than a week to get the machines since I could order them myself and get them about that fast.
Well it's now 2 weeks later and we're still without the hardware. When I asked for a status update early last week, I was told they had been shipped and was given a tracking number to track the package with UPS. The UPS tracking site showed that they were on the truck for delivery that day, so I figured about 2 more days (since my employer has a rather large mail system) to get to my office.
It's now 1 week after that, and we're still without the hardware. When I emailed the mail services team about it today, they (very politely replied), that it had been delivered to the building, and signed for by someone on my admins behalf. So I sent an email to the person who signed, and my admin to see if the hardware had arrived.
They don't have it.
So I've now spent 2+ weeks waiting for this #$%!^ hardware that I could have just gone down to the store to get 2 weeks ago.
How does this relate to the Red Sox.....actually, hell if I know, I'm just too pissed off about this hardware order (and the incredibly inefficiencies that it exposes in my company's process, and to some degree culture) to write about the baseball game tonight.
Sure he got the win tonight, but he gave up 4 runs and 12 hits against the 4th worst offense in the AL, that's hardly a great start from the guy the Red Sox gave a huge contract to in the offseason.
Thanks to some experiences at work over the past few days, I'm seeing alot of things through corporate tainted glasses, including the Red Sox. For example, I have a couple of developers on my team that need new hardware to start work on a new project. Seems simple enough right? I asked about getting the hardware about 2 weeks ago, and even offered to stroll to the store down the street to buy the machines and bring them back. For some reason (that I'm still not entirely clear on), this was frowned upon so I went through the proper channels figuring that it can't take much more than a week to get the machines since I could order them myself and get them about that fast.
Well it's now 2 weeks later and we're still without the hardware. When I asked for a status update early last week, I was told they had been shipped and was given a tracking number to track the package with UPS. The UPS tracking site showed that they were on the truck for delivery that day, so I figured about 2 more days (since my employer has a rather large mail system) to get to my office.
It's now 1 week after that, and we're still without the hardware. When I emailed the mail services team about it today, they (very politely replied), that it had been delivered to the building, and signed for by someone on my admins behalf. So I sent an email to the person who signed, and my admin to see if the hardware had arrived.
They don't have it.
So I've now spent 2+ weeks waiting for this #$%!^ hardware that I could have just gone down to the store to get 2 weeks ago.
How does this relate to the Red Sox.....actually, hell if I know, I'm just too pissed off about this hardware order (and the incredibly inefficiencies that it exposes in my company's process, and to some degree culture) to write about the baseball game tonight.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
