You know. I was all set last night to rant for about 4,568,342 of title. I convinced myself not to, sure I'd come off as ridiculously overly negative, and would turn all of you off from this site forever. Then something happened:
via d.yimg.com
Well. Not that specifically, but you get the point. A big positive for us tonight, in the person of Jon Lester. Definitely helped temper the...temper I felt towards/about this team last night.
- Lester was excellent. We can't be too down on ourselves with him and Becks in the rotation. This is what he's capable of, ladies and gentlemen, and this performance nor his no-hitter were flukes. He's not going to do this every time out, but I feel awesome about Jon Lester taking the mound these days.
- Coco Crisp is hot. .880 OPS in June. Is it going to keep up? I don't know, but he's definitely helping the Sox and himself out if he still wants to be traded.
- Our starting catcher can no longer be up when the game is on the line in the 8th or 9th inning. Just can't happen. Sean Casey can hit, and Alex Cora can kind of run if it comes to that. It's silly to continue showing faith in him. And the hit-and-run with Lowell on-base ahead of him has worked a grand total of zero times out of three million tries in the last two days. At this point, I'm ready for Lowell to be a little bit insubordinate when the sign is given.
- DP is on pace for 47 2Bs, 17 HR, and 17 SB. I'm dubious about the HR and SBs, but he's looking well past the point of rebounding after a slow start this season. Drew's been keeping it going as well.
- I've seen a lot of people jump right off the MDC bandwagon lately in light of his very recent struggles. Let's hold judgement for now. I still prefer him to everyone but Paps in the late innings of games, though the idea of giving Aardsma a shot in some of those situations doesn't bother me too much. OTOH, I don't know what Hansen needs, but what he and we don't need is for him to be having an even worse run recently than MDC has. Where is '07 Oki when you need him? And WTF did Lopez do to piss Tito off. I'm not saying 8th inning, but he certainly is as good an option as most everyone around lately for the 7th and for situations with Inherited Runners. Sure he's liable to walk guys every so often, but he gets GBs from guys on both sides of the plate.
- Daisuke. Dice-BB. Whatever you want to call him. I'm tired of it. The Sox need to look into something for him if he can't put together a few straight starts of 6 IP minimum (with all of those starts, of course, coming in under 110 pitches and with less than 4 walks). Trying not to aim too high here.
- Finally, Mike Timlin is back. That's pretty much all I have to say about that.