This hasn't been the Red Sox week. You wouldn't go to the baseball restaurant and order up a week of baseball like the previous from the menu. "Let's see... I'll take the Series Loss To A Bitter Rival to start, and can I get that with a Injured Starter on the side? Great, thanks. Then I'll have an Extra Inning Loss, medium rare, with Offensive Ineptitude sauce and another Injured Starter on the side. And for desert I'll have the Frustration Tart with raspberries, cherries, and no hits with runners in scoring position. And if you could possibly bring me a soda and spill in on my crotch, I'd appreciate it."
Link time!
I've been arguing in this space and others for robot umpires. I don't care if they're computer systems that tell actual umpires what the correct calls should be, a complicated and comprehensive system of instant replay, actual robots that walk around on the field and say "beep boop!" for out and "boop beep!" for safe or all of the above. Some thing has to be done about all the missed calls that are changing the course of games. Sometimes these calls are subtle and other times they are obvious but they change the outcome of the game in either case. Take for example the recent kerfuffle in Florida over Hunter Pence's homer/double/out. SB Nation's Rob Neyer has a treatise on it which, aside from the jarring use of expletive, raises a number of good questions. The point I keep coming back to though is why have instant replay for this and not for that? Of course homers are important, but so are doubles. And singles. And strikes.
We talked a bit about this in yesterday's Daily Links, but it's going to be an important point going forward. Know how I know? Alex Speier of WEEI.com thinks so. Good enough for me. Mr. Speier has a piece up on the Rangers and how they match up with our Red Sox. Skipping to the end of the page here, the Rangers are a very good team, and I'm not going out on a limb when I say they're one of the three best teams in the American League. But don't forget: so are the Red Sox. The Sox recent slump has coincided with a Yankees surge (of course) but Boston has spent the majority of the season at at the top of baseball in runs scored and their rotation is top heavy with talent, especially if Erik Bedard is healthy. It's no guarantee of success, but if the Red Sox should be scared of Texas, Texas should be similarly afraid of the Red Sox.
Power Rankings time! Beyond the Boxscore has the Red Sox fourth behind the Pirates and Nationals and what is clearly an assumed Oakland A's. Fan Graphs, which lives to go against the grain, has listed, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, the Sox second behind the Yankees (I assume it's all just alphabetical).
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