Game 18: RED Sox 10, the other Sox 3

"On the other side of this photo, Youkilis is bored."
Direct quote from Bobby Valentine

Note: I know I did not write a economic blog post yesterday, but there is good reasoning behind it. I do not like to blog at work so most of this blog posts are written early in the morning or late at night and set on a timer. I didn't get around to an Eco post, but I should be all caught up the weekend. Thanks for patience!

First off, I would just like to thank the Texas Rangers for dumping off Salty-mocha (Catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia) for entirely too cheap.  I also want to thank Phil Humber, perfect game pitcher a week ago, for totally missing his spots and relying way too much on his fastball to get him out of trouble.

The game was a widly entertaining, and way less panicky-y than last night's ball game. But it certainly had the makings of another blown multi-run game.

Let's start off with Felix Doubront. I am an absolute huge fan of Felix, but he does make it hard on me. He has impressed thoroughly through 4 starts. Let's just say he SHOULD have already picked up his first victory, after shutting down the Yankees, but his bullpen failed to help him out.

Not the story of last night. Behind strong bats from Youk (a 3rd inning Grand Slam, which is the ONLY 2nd one I've ever witnessed) and Saly-mocha with his 2 home run game. Which, if you're counting at home, is twice as many home runs per millions of dollars we pay Salty than Carl Crawford...but more on him later.

Can we all agree the White Sox are not a very good baseball team? They have pieces, but in the transition of the Robin Ventura era, it's becoming more and more evident that they just aren't a good team. That's not saying they cant be, (I.e The LA Dodgers) but given their payroll, they will likely be shippers rather than receivers come Trade Deadline time.

Another bright spot to take away from this game is the absolute shutout Junichi Tazawa dealt in the 7th, 8th AND 9th innings. Although, there was a risky appearance of Franklin Morales, on the heel of an appearance last night, warming up in the bullpen. I don't want to take this appearance too wildly, seeing how it is a very small sample size, but it reminded me a lot of Okajima in 2007 (remember him?). Maybe, just maybe, the Red Sox bullpen isn't exactly as bad as the media as made it out to be. People have to realize we played Detroit, Toronto, Tampa Bay, Texas and the Yankees the first part of the season...all of whom are expected to contend for a playoff spot. Were finally playing the middle of the road teams and were doing a lot of what we should be doing.

Exploiting weaknesses and capitalizing on having better talent. As much of a factor as numbers are, there is no number for better talent beating lesser talent.

Let's just hope this continues, were 8-10, 2 games away from .500 and the season basically starting over. And were also only 3.5 games out of the Lead in the toughest division in Baseball.


Hey, it could be worse, nation. We could be LAA Angels fans.

Go Red Sox!