The wacky single to start the Tiger’s rally combine with Lugo’s screwed up, showed that the game could had gone for the Sox. As much as Lugo deserves to be the goat, Papelbon was giving too many pitches that the Tigers could hit. Even though the Polanco single was kind of freaky, and I don’t think any pitcher in the AL could had stopped Polanco that night. It was frustrating, and Lugo screwed up, when they needed not to. However it was a great hitting game, and the Sox looked really good as a line up. Lowell was great. They should had won it. i would had put Oki in the 9th, use Hanson in the 8th. However, Oki had a good outing. If Lugo did that against the Yankees in Sept, he would had been crucified, ditto for Papelbon in either tipping his pitches or putting too many fast balls down the middle of the plate.

What you miss is the good Karma that doing well in the clutch does and should buy a player. Papelbon has so much earned GOOD Karma already that he could take a month off from performing well and still be admired. Now Lugo already has negative total Karma so the best he can do is try to climb out of the hole he has created for himself. This negative Karma Lugo has is well earned IMO, and it has real significance as a predictive tool down the road. It means he will likely screw up and cost this potentially great team dearly when it counts the most!!

What a shame that nothing gets down about this guy that has no business being on a great potential team like this Red Sox team. Most importantly IMO, Lugo’s negative Karma also kills momentum which is probably his biggest net negative effect on the team!