Game 110: Worst Case Scenario Comes True; Yanks Sweep Sox
by Ben Buchanan on Aug 10, 2009 12:20 AM EDT
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The Red Sox came into the game at the lowest point they'd been at since their early struggles--perhaps even all year. They had lost 5 straight to their top division rivals, the offense had been shut down in the last two games, and the Yankees seemed primed to finish off the second Boston Massacre.
Things were actually looking up around the top of the 8th inning. Victor Martinez hit a 2-run homer to break a 30+ inning scoreless streak, and the Red Sox lead 2-1. All that was left was to ride the arms of Bard and Papelbon to the finish and finally get back to winning.
Less than 30 minutes later, the wheels had come off once again—just as they had in seemingly every game on this dismal road trip—and the Yankees were on top thanks to back-to-back 2-out home runs from Damon and Teixeira off of Daniel Bard. This coming seconds after Jon Miller mentioned Bard having only given up 1 home run all year. The young closer-of-the-future would walk Alex Rodriguez before being pulled for Hideki Okajima, who would allow the game to get out of reach giving up a double to Jorge Posada and a single to Nick Swisher, putting the Yankees ahead once and for all 5-2.
The Sox' offense was better tonight than it had been previously. They did score two runs, and had 12 baserunners over the course of the game. Still, 2 runs is not going to be enough against the Yankees, even with a great start from Jon Lester, who pitched 7 innings of 1-run ball, striking out 7 and allowing 0 free passes. His one run came in the 7th inning when Alex Rodriguez took a good, low fastball very deep over the wall in center.
With Texas defeating the Angels earlier today, the Sox have dropped back into a tie for the Wild Card. They'll head home to Fenway to try and turn things around against the AL Central leading Detroit Tigers.
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STOP WHINING, EVERYONE KNOWS THIS SUCKS.
@bs_uf15bosox9be The Original Gameday; Learn to use SB Nation
The Sox averaged 2 runs per game against New York.
That’s not enough to win a series against Baltimore, let alone the Yankees. Barring immediate improvements in the offense, and some better pitching performances, the Sox are going to miss the playoffs entirely. Which is probably just as well, since if we limp into October this team, as presently performing, will be out in the first three games.
"It's just a tiny little nick, but it hurts when I get champagne in there."
- Jason Bay, on getting spiked scoring the winning run in ALDS Game Four.
Assuming this is a typo, but an oddly appropriate one.
Because, at the moment, it’s looking like our aces are our only weapons.
This offense better go batshit crazy tomorrow night.
@bs_uf15bosox9be The Original Gameday; Learn to use SB Nation
Yeah, typo.
But it also kinda makes me look like I know tennis.
by Ben Buchanan on Aug 10, 2009 1:40 AM EDT up reply actions
It's the offense
The starting pitching—with the glaring exception of Smoltz—has actually been OK in both of the series. When you give up a home run in the bottom of the fourteenth or fifteenth inning, you can blame it on a bad pitch, but you can’t say it’s a bad pitching performance. The offense, on the other hand, has been ridiculously bad. There’s no realistic way that the lineup is this bad. There has to be some correction to the mean.
If there’s any consolation in the remainder of the schedule, it’s that there’s a 30-22 split in favor of home games, and only three road trips left. The bad news is that there’s only a four-game homestand with the Tigers before the next road trip starts (Rangers, Toronto).
Offense
while I agree that the offense has be the main culpret, it we look beyond this series and go back and consider how the team has played from the 2 weeks leading up to the AS break until now, it is more than just the offense.
a)obviously the offense stinks. It is sad that Matsui would be the best offensive player on our team by OPS outside of Bay and Youkilis at this point. However, there have been times when the offense has been strong in this stretch onlt to have…
b)The pen blow it. Our BP has cost us many games during this stretch. Bard along cost us, single handedly, 2 games during this road stretch. Our pen imploded in several other games, including against teams such as KC.
c)Outside of Lester and Beckett we have gotten nothing. It was not just Smoltz. Penny has had one decent start since the AS break, and Smoltz had none. Buchholz had 3 decent starts and 2 poor ones, so really that is fine. But in the Penny/Smoltz games we are so far behind before the game has really matured that it puts even more pressure on the offense. Who is happy Wake went on the DL now?
It is rather strange. When you look at the 06 team, you can see why the were so bad. 2 awesome offense players on an otherwise bad offense. Terrible starting pitching and pen. This year should be different. The offense on paper is much deeper, and the pitching on paper is much better. But nearly everything that can go wrong in the last 5 weeks has. Bad play, injuries and all the breaks.
You can only ask a bullpen to hold so many 1-run leads
A bullpen with an ERA of 3.00 gives up a run of its own every three innings. And note that this doesn’t count inherited runners from the starter.
The bullpen might shut the opposition one evening, but that means there’s a two-run outing somewhere else to make up for it.
So again, the problems are largely rooted in the lack of production by the offense.
Im going to take a look
because my unscientific sense says that the bullpen era is very misleading. They have been good in low leverage situations, and at holding to close scores/tie games (very importnat indeed) but absolutely a mess with a lead. Be back soon…
going back to June 30
1)Loss to O’s 11-10. Pen blows 9-1 lead in 7th.
2)Loss to Seattle 7-6 in 11. RamRam gives up 2 in 11th.
3)Loss 8-6 to KC. Pen blows 7-3 lead from 6th on.
4)Loss 9-8 in 11 to As-Sox had 3 run lead in 9th.
5)Loss 4-2 in 13-Bard shits the bed in 8th
6)Loss 5-3 to Yankees, Bard shits the bed in the 8th.
How many games during this stretch did the Sox pen hold up to pin one on the other team? Once-the day after the baltimore debacle when they came back and the Sox won in extras. During this stretch, the Sox only have 15 total wins. Of those wins, the pen was asked to do anything in only 4 of them. 3 one run saves by Papelbon against bad teams (the As and Os) and the previously mentioned game against the Os where we won in 11. An interesting fact is that we have a 4-6 record in extra inning games (not so bad) but we are 1-4 in our last 5 of them during this stretch. In all, this might look a bit like cherry picking, but those are the numbers. The pen has not been good at holding leads (some of them huge) or in extra inning games. Who do you trust out of the pen right now? Bard? Oki? Paps?
More Pen
our best pen arm since the break was Masterson who had a great era and was King 10+ per 9 but he is gone. Paps has been good since the break, but if Saito is your second best pen ERA (since the break) you have a problem. If the pen holds up in merely 4 of the above mentioned games (say the 3 obvious ones numbers 1,3,4 and one of the Bard games) you are looking at a VERY different situation, even given the offensive struggles…
Jesus
You know, we had some bad luck on these last games. We lost some really close ones against Tampa and against the MFY. With a better luck, we could have been talking a lot differently about this team right now.
But God damn, the bats SUCK right now. The Sox offense was never really consistent, but I don’t remember it being this bad.
"Hey we got a lot in common here... I'm gonna rape you"
It hasn't been any worse than in years past
There’s usually a couple of weeks each year when the Sox offense seems to go into hibernation.
Normally, they’re playing teams like Baltimore, KC, or Seattle, so it’s not nearly so obvious as this year, when it just happened to coincide with six straight games against their two divisional rivals.
But yeah, it’s completely mystifying. There’s no logical reason it should be this bad for this long.
Perhaps an intervention by Theo is an order. (It worked for the MFY’s, so why not for the Sox?)
yikes
It’s not that the Sox bullpen isn’t good. It’s just that its reputation rests on a handful of guys (Papelbon, Bard, Okajima, del Carmen, Masterson before the trade) that are all just gassed right now. Last night was just the extra-inning games (and a Penny start, which is a lot like extra innings for the pen) catching up to these guys.
More casual than the average fan.
by baseball conspiracy theories on Aug 10, 2009 9:16 AM EDT reply actions
You know what's almost as bad as being swept by the MFYs?
Jon Miller and Joe Morgan. Holy @#$%ing $#!+ That was hell. It was utter hell.
Bloggy was feelin’ a bit stabby last night. Remember when they went two @#$%ing innings and didn’t call a play on the @#$%ing field. AWESOME.
I love you Don Orsillo. I love you like I love coffee and beer. I don’t ever want to do without you for any length of time ever.
Man I love that tuna casserole.
Can anyone give the pitching staffs of both teams some credit?
Look, it’s not like the Yankees blew out the Sox on this one, the pitching match ups were pretty consistent between both teams. Even the first game, yeah Smoltz and Traber screwed the pooch as it were but it wasn’t Joba’s best game post ASB either. And the mini-blowout the Yankee pen had in the ninth probably wasn’t in the script Yankee fans want to read from.
Who would have expected the Red Sox or the Yankees to blank each other through 14 innings. Ok, so the Yankees won because of a rookie who just threw a pretty good pitch to the wrong guy (whether or not he used is about as important at this point as whether or not Manny used or Ortiz used to me tbh). However, the two pitching staffs went head to head and matched each other through 14 innings. It’s been said before but I feel like I have to say it again, good pitching beats great hitting.
Call him Cash Cow, call him CC, call him whatever you want, he was dealing against Bucholz (sp? sorry his name is impossible for me to get right). But let’s not forget what Clay did to the Yankees bats, the third game wasn’t by any stretch a sure thing in “Da Bronx.”
Who knew that Andy and Lester would throw the way they threw in the fourth game. I honestly had the Yankees winning 3 out of the 4 this weekend cause I thought Beckett or Lester would take a victory but it wasn’t to be. I thought Andy would pull a Smoltz and come out with a terrible start only because he seemed like he was due for one bad one. In the end the Yankees matched the Sox pitch for pitch in the last game and came back on the Sox when they had to.
All that I’m reading on this blog/thread/whatever else you want to call it is how woeful the Sox offense is, and I’ll be the first to admit that it’s not as dominate as it has been in the past but how about we give some credit to both pitching staffs, too? The Yankees and Red Sox had a classic of a series (especially the last three games). I will only say this to preface the above, I am a Yankees fan, have been since I became cognizant of baseball in the mid 80’s. However, this weekend was like playoff baseball in early August with both teams biting their nails, both teams doing the best they could, and both teams playing their hearts out and that’s something both sets of fans should be proud of.
PS sorry for the length of this post.
no argument here
That was one of the more discouraging aspects of the series for me: having Beckett, Buchholz, and Lester each pitch well enough to give the team a chance to win, and not winning even one of those games. Full credit has to go to Burnett and CC for pitching brilliantly. As far as Pettitte, the Sox would have gotten to him, if only they were a team that could actually hit; he was crafty and effective, even if he couldn’t get his fastball over consistently.
More casual than the average fan.
by baseball conspiracy theories on Aug 10, 2009 10:49 AM EDT up reply actions
that's fine
for Burnett and sabathia, but Joba and Pettitte sucked and still the Sox could not come close to taking advantage. The Sox had 2 HRs and 13 baserunners against Chamberlain in 5 innings and could only muster 4 runs. Pettitte had nothing and was in trouble nearly every inning with walks and hits, and yet, he put up a zero for 7 innings. A good offense kills those guys. The Sox do not have a good offense. This amazing fact from Mazz today:
From May 9 through Aug. 9, a span covering three months and precisely 80
games, the Red Sox rank eighth in the American League in runs scored
behind, among others, the Oakland Athletics
If that does not scare Sox fans, I don’t know what will..
seriously.
Is there a more played out sports photo than the sad-faced pitcher who’s just given up a home run with the out-of-focus batter circling the bases in the background?
I think not.
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