Beantown Sports Guys

The Walking Wounded

After seeing the Red Sox lineup card yesterday, I was shocked to see that David Ortiz was out of the lineup. I was well aware that Manny has had health issues as of late, so for Manny to be out right now isn't a surprise at all. I wondered if Francona was giving him a rest, as he likes to do from time to time, and was thinking how crazy it is with us just barely hanging on in the Wild Card and AL East races.

And then I heard why Ortiz was out.

An irregular heartbeat is not something to mess around with. I would rather the Sox tank the rest of the season and see Ortiz fine, even if he had to retire for some reason, than miss any time at all playing with his kids. Baseball is a game, and life is life. You don't mess around with that.

Tito made the right decision, I don't think too many sane people question his move. In fact, I think it is a good decision to send Manny and Wily Mo back to Boston to get checked out for their injuries right now as well. The fact of the matter is, we haven't been winning with them lately, so we might as well send them back to get healthy and get some of the guys like Pedroia, Carlos Pena, and Eric Hinske some playing time. If after this roadtrip we still have an extreme outside chance at making the playoffs, then hopefully we'll have those guys back in the lineup, along with Nixon and Varitek.

Right now we're shopping Wells, and it sounds like Theo is doing what he can to send him to a contender. It'll be sad to see Boomer go, but he is retiring after this year anyways (his words), and we might as well do for him what we can't seem to do for ourselves, which is get into the playoffs. He cleared waivers, and can be sent to any team in the league right now so I'd love to see him end up on the Dodgers. Ever since they got Grady Little, Nomar, and Bill Mueller, I've considered them the NL Red Sox. It would be good to send him over to the Dodgers and give them a proven veteran lefty, especially if we can snag someone useful in return.

My thoughts and prayers are with Ortiz and his family. Knowing Big Papi, he wants to be back in the lineup as soon as possible, but the Fenway Faithful just want him back healthy. At this point, that would make this season a success.

Timlin no longer old faithful...just old

For the last few years, bringing in Mike Timlin was money. You knew he wouldn't give up chincy runs, you knew he would have the game in the bag if you needed him to protect a lead.

Sadly, that is no longer.

I don't know what is wrong with him, but every time he comes into the game, he gives me the feeling I used to get when Alan Embree came in. You never knew what you were going ot get and it was a sick,empty feeling in your stomach.

After failing to protect a 3-2 lead last night in Seattle that would have shrunk the Yankees lead in the East to just 4 1/2 games, Timlin said he felt like he made good pitches and was just beat. I'll buy that, because the Beltre homer was off the plate almost half a foot and he just muscled it over the wall. The issue isn't just with Timlin, it's with the overall identity of the Sox. We don't have one, and this is when we need to develop one.

We're definitely not out of it. We just need to win these games when the Yankees are losing, we need to stay close in the Wild Card race. The Yankees are only going to get better, and we need to just play up to our abilities and we will be fine. We still have a 4 game series in New York and that will make our season or break it. We need to step up and make it.

And there is no better time to start making it than now.

Preseasoning

You can never get too excited over an NFL preseason game.

 Different coaches take different approaches with them. For example, some coaches live and die by the “starting QB plays 1^st quarter, backup plays 2^nd and 3^rd, and other QBs play in the 4^th” mentality. Some of them will play the offensive line for the first two quarters together regardless of who is at the helm. Some have their defensive starters in for only 2 series.

 That is what makes it so damn hard to determine whether your team is doing well or not. If you are lucky and have a coach on the opposing team that has the same mentality and thought process as your head coach, you might be able to say something like “our starters beat their starters, so that is all that matters” but more times than not, you can’t.

 But there are some very important things to take away from preseason games…

 I just don’t think there need to be so damn many.

 Guys like Clinton Portis that are the foundation of the Redskins offense are swearing under their breath because of an injury that happened in a stupid preseason game. Some teams play 5 (if they play in the Hall of Fame game). Some people say there should be no preseason games, just intersquad scrimmages.

 Above all else, the NFL makes out like bandits on preseason. The owners I am sure would love to get rid of it, as they know that losing a Portis or a McNabb or a Strahan or an Urlacher for any part of the season could impact their entire season.

 One of the best parts of preseason is seeing the guys your team drafted in April and how they do in a live action game rather than just training camp. Along the same vein is seeing that new free agent your team picked up and how he is doing adjusting to your team’s system.

 It is tough for season ticket holders to unload their preseason games because they are the same price as regular season tickets. Some people I know that are smart will guarantee at least one chance at tickets to a regular season game if someone buys a preseason game from them. This unloads preseason tickets they can’t sell normally and gives the person two games to go to, one a useless contest, another one a choice game (with any luck).

 Personally, I love preseason. Yeah I hate the injuries, but I watch a ton of college football, and love seeing kids on the field trying their best to make even the practice squad on some of these teams. They have nothing to lose and that is almost pure football at its best. Preseason is a time where coaches like to try out some trick plays or guys at positions they aren’t normally used to playing. If you’re at the game, it gives you a great chance to roam the stadium and check out the upper deck in person and wonder what having season tickets up there is like. If you have never done it, you need to try it. Watching football from the highest nosebleeds is football at its purest: you look down on the players almost as if you were tethered above them. You see the play develop, you see holes open up and close, you see why QBs have such a tough time getting the ball to their receivers sometimes.

 Preseason isn’t always a bad thing, but even too much of a good thing can be a bad thing, right?

Mr. Clutch

How many times is David Ortiz going to breathe life back into the Red Sox? He just hit a moonshot into the night to put us up 4-3 for the moment.

I know everyone is saying that Derek Jeter is a legit contender for MVP this season, but a stat line of 10 HRs, and 70 RBIs doesn't really matchup at all in my eyes to someone that has 33 more HRs and almost 50 more RBIs. I don't care how stellar his defense is. If you really need to count that, then how about adding a category for guys that come up to the plate and get game tying and game winning hits like it is their only job. Without Ortiz this season the Sox are in over their head.

As a side note, I have to comment on some bush league stuff that just happened in the game. Schilling tried to catch Abreu on an extended lead and he runs back as Youk goes for the ball and with one foot on the bag he slides his cleat into Youks glove hand, practically kicking the ball into the outfield. Youk tries to hold on but can't, and tries to run after the ball but can't, so Abreu advances all the way to third base. They showed it 3 times, and maybe it's because I'm a diehard Sox fan, but it clearly looked like he was trying to hurt Youk or at least try some A-Rod slap the ball out of the glove with an appendage crap. Either way, he did both, and we'll see how this effects Youk when he gets up to bat.

Put them down when you have a shot

I have said it before and I will say it again:

When you have a guy like Mike Mussina on the ropes you need to bury him. Period.

Moose is one of those guys that can be gotten to, and usually early, but if you let him slip away with only a couple runs, he will settle down and kill you. That is precisely what he is doing to the Sox as we speak.

The rain delay seemed to hurt Schilling who was cruising fairly smoothly up until the tarp was pulled over the infield and it looked like Mussina was in fact human. Now the roles are reversed, as Schilling just gave up a 3 run Home Run to Giambi, and Moose has been stingy at best. I knew 2 runs weren’t going to win us this game, but damn, sometimes you’d rather give up the runs slowly rather than all at once.

If the Sox want to compete and have a shot at making the post season they all need to start hitting. I still don’t understand why Francona moved an On Base machine like Youkilis behind Manny (protection, yeah I know) when he was for a stretch one of the best leadoff hitters in baseball. Just because their previous leadoff hitter in Coco Crisp came back from injury doesn’t mean he’s the person that should be leading off. Ever since his injury his season has been spotty at best, I know firsthand as I have him on my fantasy team.

Without the hitting, our pitching suffers even more. Losing Varitek hurts our young arms tremendously. Lester, Hansen, Papelbon, Delcarmen, and even Snyder, all dearly miss Tek behind the plate calling the game.

The bottomline right now is the Sox need to go for the jugular every single time they have a team on the ropes. The Patriots have done this for years and still haven’t developed that killer instinct. They have a team almost at the breaking point and they let them come back to the point where they either blow it or they just barely escape with the win, easily taking years off of the fans’ lives. Leaving runners on base is a terrible thing to do, and against guys like Randy Johnson and Mussina, you rarely come away with those games if you do that.

The wheels on the bandwagon haven’t fallen off yet, because there are still two games left in this series. If the Sox blow both, or even one of them, everyone will jump off, and if they win both, the wheels will explode from everyone jumping back on. We’ll see how it turns out soon enough.

It ain't over

Again, it’s been far too long between updates, so I’ll get right into it.

The Red Sox are not out of it by any stretch. I don’t know why people are writing them off. Yes, losing the last 3 straight to the Yankees is awful. Giving up almost 40 runs in that time and blowing through your bullpen on a night basis isn’t going to win you any games.

With all this happening, if the Sox win the next two, they come out of this only 1 more game behind them at 2.5. That isn’t bad considering how bad it really can be. But they need to put the pressure on. They’ve left countless guys on base and need to play like they are capable of. Hopefully Schilling will be the calming force tomorrow, and Wells will be the Wells we love to see and steal one from the Yankees. If we get through all of that, we have to be happy with the end result.

People are forgetting that Varitek will be back soon. His bat has been missed, but more importantly, his presence behind the plate is sorely missed. He is a calming force, and anytime you lose your captain for any stretch, you can easily forget the small things.

If the media wants to write off the Sox already (and some on the Globe already are), go right ahead. Maybe the Sox need to hear that to get them fired up. Maybe the Yankees and ChiSox need to hear that to get them to think they can ease up a bit. Or maybe we just need to get back on track.

And that all starts with getting our beloved captain behind the plate again.

On a final personal note, you know when your grandmother pipes up about how much she hates Giambi and A-Rod you were raised right.