Now Pitching For The Red Sox: Darnell McDonald -- A Story Of Failure

The Red Sox game went poorly. As proof of that, I present to you Darnell McDonald's scouting report as a pitcher from Kevin Goldstein:

Short, stocky RHP w/ mid-80s FB, touch 90, secondary pitches and command need work, could start for Yanks

Hopefully that helps soften the blow from the 15-5 score. Only two of those runs came from McDonald, and another four from Matt Albers.

Most of the damage was courtesy of Tim Wakefield, who had a terrible, no good, very bad fourth inning. It's the sort of inning that a decade-and-a-half of Wakefield has inured us to. Two outs surrounding a walk, and then suddenly the wheels fall off in dramatic fashion. 

To be fair to Wakefield, he did record that third out after giving up a two-run shot to Scott Sizemore, but a passed ball on strike three let Jemile Weeks reach first. To be fair to Salty, the knuckleball tends to produce its fair share of catching mishaps, and he certainly wasn't the one who then allowed a walk, double, and homer to give the A's four more runs.

What's worse is that it almost felt like maybe this was a game they could have won. Pedey and Papi went back to back right out of the gate in the bottom half, and then Ellsbury scored after tripling in the fifth to cut the lead to just four runs. When they put two men on in each of the next two innings, one could easily imagine this going down as one of the best games of the season.

But instead, Darnell McDonald (ugh) and Jacoby Ellsbury popped out, and Jed Lowrie was rung up on a pitch over the opposite batter's box, and they wouldn't score again until the ninth. By then, of course, the bullpen fun had happened.

It's a shame that this is how they followed up their beatdowns of Texas. We've gotten to the point where the games don't matter much--barring an unreal run by one of the wild card hopefuls, the Sox would need to play well below .500 over the last 31 games to have their playoff spot come into question--but on a day-to-day basis it's sure a lot nicer to watch the Sox beat a team they're supposed to beat then to watch Darnell McDonald pitch because we don't want to waste an arm on an 8-run blowout.