Game 30 - Red Sox v Yankees (@Fenway)

...and this is what I thought might happen. I was hesitant to get excited after the sweep of the Angels because lets face it, the Angels aren't setting the world on fire so the real test was going to be again the Yankees, and while it's only game 1 of the series, it's a tough loss when you've got your nominal #1 starter (emphasis on nominal) going against the other team's nominal #5 starter (again, emphasis on nominal). I hope there's something physically wrong with Beckett, because this was an absolute stinker of a start that saw his ERA skyrocket to 7.46 for the season, that's AWFUL (which is saying something for a guy that had already given up 7+ ER in two out of 6 starts on the season).

I'm not even going to bother discussing the game anymore since talking sports would also remind me of how terrible the Celtics were (I guess LeBron's elbow is ok after all) or how the Bruins lost in overtime...for all the hype over Boston's big sports night, best let it go.

I did see Iron Man 2 this morning though and since I do have a rating system, I figured I'd dust it off and put it to good use. Overall, IM2 wasn't nearly as good as the first one, partly because they screwed up with Mickey Roarke as the villain. He had great potential, but his character was just kinda lame, and what's with the jump rope weapon ('look out Iron Man, I'm going to double-dutch you to death!'). The other big flaw was the attempt to make Tony Stark more 'human' with the storyline about how that thing in his chest is affecting his health. Sorry guys, but what made Robert Downey Jr + Tony Start so great in the first movie was that he was a balls out playboy, rich with tons of women around him and smart enough to build robot suits in his basement, what else could you want? Adding the human element stripped that away a little and made the movie less entertaining (at least it did for me). On the plus side, Scarlett Johansson looked H-O-T, especially in that tight black jumpsuit thingy, rrrrraarrrrrrrrrr. But even that came at a cost as her appearance made Gwyneth Paltrow look, well, old. I've never been a big Gwyneth fan, but thought she looked good in the first movie, but the combination of a couple of years later and Scarlet in a tight jumpsuit was too much for her this time around. Enough with the babe analysis, on to the review:

Dumb (0-3 stooges): ok, so here's a flaw with my rating system...I'd actually rate this as pretty dumb, but not in a good way. I'm going to give it 1 stooge, and it's a Larry...not sure exactly what that means but it seems to fit.

Funny (0-10 LOLs): urgh, another flaw. Didn't I realize that I don't just see comedies, what was I thinking? I think I laughed once (probably at the Larry Ellison cameo), so I'll give it 1 LOL.

Length (1.5-2hrs): I think IM2 was in at just around 2hrs, which puts it at the outer limit of what I can generally tolerate.

So yeah, overall it wasn't that good, and I just realized how flawed my review system is...another thing to be pissed about today!

Game 29 - Red Sox v. Angels (@Fenway)

Ok, so yeah, I am getting a little more intrigued in this team after a 4 game sweep of the Angels, but I'm holding out on actual optimism until after this weekend against the Yankees, mostly because the Angels are sliding so while sweeping a team that's down is what a good team should be doing, it doesn't exactly prove to me that the Sox are for real just yet. Taking 2 out of 3 against the Yankees this weekend would do that.

On a completely unrelated note (if you're heard to read baseball, you can stop reading, I'm about to go on a work-related rant)...I had one of those 'what the f' moments today at work while trying to do some testing on an upcoming release of my team's software. While trying to use the internal version of our site, I was experiencing just ridiculous slow downs, to the point where I couldn't tell if there were actual bugs v. just slow network connectivity internally. It got so bad that I basically had to stop and wander around, asking my team if they too were seeing similar issues. I got the usual recommendations like 'change your proxy' which is a reasonable thing to suggest, but for some reason today, just flipped my 'what the f' bit and I went on a rant about how ludicrous it is that this kind of stuff is still a problem these days, especially at large corporations that have resources to build great infrastructure for their teams, but don't (or at least sure feel like they don't). I suppose there's a bottom line somewhere that has to be met, but since my employer is certainly very profitable, it doesn't seem that our bottleneck is a lack of resources, but rather a lack of good investment (at least from this engineer's view) of those resources. Of course it didn't help that earlier in the week I spoke with someone who was interested in a coding job on my team, and the guy was just awful, couldn't even get through the basics of my standby C++ question, and yet he's got a job at my company, urgh.

Speaking of wastes of corporate resources, I love this device:

Game 28 - Red Sox v. Angels (@Fenway)

Nomah!!!!!

I really like the fact that the Red Sox have been able to patch up the whole Nomar thing. The way things ended in 2004 always left a bad taste in my mouth, not just because of the trade, but mostly because of the connections people tried to draw between his departure and the eventual World Championship that year. Sure I've heard all kinds of stuff about how he was difficult and hornery, but he was a hell of a player for them for many years and I always felt like he got the shaft after he left, so good for him.

As for the game today, another positive step forward with a prototypical game that had good pitching and defense and enough offense to get a W. And of course it was heartening to see Papi's line for the night with a couple of hits, including an opposite field home run. His home run was about the only good news I had on my drive home, as 405 was a parking lot and even the surface roads were abysmal, so my usually 15min drive. Good thing I have a smartphone now so I can get scores when I'm stuck, since it's either that or listen to the local sports guys try and talk hockey (seems that the Canucks are getting way more attention around here this year than in years past, no doubt due to people trying to forget the Sonics).

Let's try and get a sweep tomorrow so we're on a roll for the Yankees!

Game 27 - Red Sox v. Angels (@Fenway)

Several good things about tonights 5-1 win over the Angels, in no particular order:

(1) Another good start from Lester, seems to be coming out of his early-season funk as he's gone 15 innings in his last 2 starts combined with 1 ER and 16 K's

(2) Good defense, Scutaro made a heck of a play on the grounder from Morales (ironically this pushed across the only Angels run) and saw another nice place on the double play by Pedroia in the 8th against Abreu.

(3) Clutch hitting (at least in he 8th), granted it looked to me like Rivera misplayed Hermida's fly ball into a double, but we'll take it, and another double by Lowell to make it 5-1 was good to see.

On the downside Papi just looks terrible. While it's possible I've only seen his worst at bats given the small sample size of clips that I get to see, the stats are bearing out that he's just dreadful right now. Time to give up? No, but Lowell should be starting at DH at least 4x a week if you ask me.

Now if someone (yes I'm looking at you Mariners) could beat the Rays in a series, we might start to climb into this thing.

By the way, I really enjoyed the latest from Chad Finn on Boston.com, great way to summarize the sentiments of all Red Sox fans when it comes to the Rivera/Jeter/Posada/Pettite quartet.

Game 26 - Red Sox v. Angels (@Fenway)

Call me cynical (I am a Red Sox fan afterall), but while tonight's game was an obvious improvement over what we saw in Baltimore, I'm not buying in yet. Why? Well for one, Joe Saunders has been pretty horrible so far this year, so while clubbing him is the thing that good teams should do, it's not exactly a major accomplishment either. Also, while Clay did get the W (good for my fantasy league team too!), he slipped back a bit on his strike efficiency (I'm really starting to like this stat to evaluate his starts). For the night, only 0.596% of his pitches went for strikes, which is below that 0.6ish number that is looking increasingly like the mark he needs to hit to have a good start (his other numbers for the night were 5 2/3IP, 8H 4ER 3BB and only 2K).

And what's the deal with Adrian Beltre, who committed his 6th error of the season tonight? Living in Seattle I saw a little of Beltre over the last few years (not that I'm anti-Mariners or anything, but they're broadcasting crew is just lame, especially Dave Sims, the guy is just a rah rah knucklehead if you ask me, not that you did of course), and while what little I saw was good defense, I never saw the kind of stand out defense that we all heard about after he signed with the Red Sox.

But don't listen to me, here's espn's resident knucklehead with his deep analysis (they need to pitch better, hit better and field better):

Tim Kurkjian on what the Red Sox need to do.

Uh, thanks Tim.

Game 25 - Red Sox v. Orioles (@Camden)

Ouch (5-4 loss in 10 innings on Friday)
Ouch (12-9 loss on Saturday)
Ouch (3-2 loss in 10 innings on Sunday)

Bleh. Ok, you get the gist...I'm not feeling so hot about what happened over the last three days. It's bad enough to get swept for the second time this year, and losing the fourth series (out of 8), but its just compounded by the fact that it was (a) against the Orioles and (b) lost with our best reliever in the game after the guy that is nominally the best starter on the staff started the game.

So much for the hopes of a 5-1 road trip and getting back to respectability (not to mention over .500), the Red Sox are now 7 games behind the streaking Tampa Bay Rays, there are only two teams further out of first place in their respective divisions right now:

Baltimore (11 GB)
Houston (8.5 GB)

Hopefully we don't see the Orioles passing us on the way down. Even worse (and yes I am piling on now) the Red Sox are the only team that is overachieving in the AL East now (at least according to the Expected Win/Loss stats that espn.com keeps which uses Bill James' Pythagorean Expectation formula to calculate how many wins and losses a team should have based off of runs scored and runs allowed. While not quite as disasterous as Krispy Kreme's attempt to invade New England (and take on the 800 LB gorilla known as Dunkin' Donuts), this start is making feel about as down as I did after I ate my first Krispy Kreme.



Lots of hype, and disappointing taste.

Game 24 - Red Sox v. Orioles (@Camden)

Ouch, this one hurt a little for a few reasons. They fell two games under .500 and lost a chance at going 5-1 (which is what I was hoping for when the road trip started), and seemed very achievable after the sweep in Toronto and heading into Baltimore to play a floundering Orioles team. Also painful in that Dice-K got shelled (10 baserunners and 6 earned runs in 4 2/3 innings). Judging by the box score and pitch count, it sounds like he was his typical, annoying, nibbling self instead of attacking hitters. About the only good thing (from a Red Sox perspective) that came out of this game was Ortiz hitting 2 HR, one of them off left handed reliever Alberto Castillo, lets hope this turns into the start of a bit of a hot streak for Papi.

Papi has more HR than he did at the same point in the season as last year, but has fewer RBI (possibly from hitting a little lower, and just fewer chances as he's only had 56 AB this April versus 87 AB last April. His OBP + AVG are also down year over year, but his SLG is up (with a huge boost from tonight's performance). His K/AB ratio is up:

2009 (through April): 0.252
2010 (through April): 0.375

None of these are making me feel particularly optimistic about him turning it around, but given that he did turn it around in the summer last year and he's earned some slack because of his history with the team, it will be a wait and see situation for at least another month IMO.