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!