Faster Going

Finally! Okay, now we’re in business.  I don’t want to necessarily say that the news is big news; I think a year or two ago it would have been really big news, but players age year to year, and last year’s phenom is this year’s solid, all-around acquisition who’s good but doesn’t necessarily have that wow factor anymore.  But given our needs and our situation, I’d say Ben’s moves during and after the Winter Meetings were good and much-needed ones.  He’s putting together a stable team while maintaining a healthy amount of financial flexibility, and John Farrell is happy with the developments.  All in all, I’d say we’re definitely going in a great direction.

Anyway, let’s get down to it.  We’ve signed Mike Napoli to a three-year contract worth thirty-nine million dollars.  Don’t let last season’s aggregate stats fool you.  He batted .227 with twenty-four home runs and fifty-six RBIs with an on-base percentage of .343, but look at his numbers in his new home: .307 batting average, nine home runs, twenty RBIs, and a 1.14 OBP.  Admittedly, the sample size of seventy-five at-bats is small, but numbers aside, he’s known for pulling the ball, and his swing will thrive in Fenway.  As for defense, he’s a catcher by trade, but don’t expect to see him behind the plate.  He’ll probably end up at first.

Our next name is Shane Victorino, the Flyin’ Hawaiian.  It’s another three-year, thirty-nine-million-dollar deal.  Last year, he batted .255 with eleven homers, fifty-five RBIs, and a .321 OBP.  Don’t forget that he bats switch, though, and while he batted .229 as a leftie, he batted .320 as a rightie.  But he had vastly more at-bats from the left than the right, so again, the sample size must be considered.  Still, versatility has never been frowned upon in our organization.  As for defense, like Napoli, Victorino will not field in familiar territory.  All trade rumors concerning Ellsbury are patently false, and Victorino will not be playing center.  He’ll be playing right for sure.  And it’ll be a welcome relief.  Fenway’s right field can break any veteran, but Shane has the stuff to handle it.  He has three Gold Gloves and a center fielder’s speed and arm, and that combination in right, once he learns the fatal angles out there, will be formidable.  It’ll be nice breathing easy with a steady patrol out there.

It’s worth noting that Ben and John met in person with Josh Hamilton, but don’t get too excited.  We already have Ellsbury, and Hamilton wants either Texas or a long-term deal, neither of which we will provide.

And we signed Ryan Dempster to a two-year deal worth $26.5 million.  Granted, he has spent almost all of his time in the National League aside from a few handfuls of games last season, which he started for Texas.  But his ERA was 3.38 last season, and his WHIP was 1.20; not too shabby.  Just as important, if not more important, to why we were interested in him in the first place is the fact that, before last season, his last for seasons totaled at least two hundred innings, and last season he clocked 173 innings which isn’t too far behind.  That means three things: durability, durability, durability.  On the other hand, durability doesn’t mean much unless you’re good, and his brief stint in the American League didn’t go well at all, so I’m concerned as to how he’ll make out in the AL East, which, as we all know, is the toughest division there is, basically.  So I’d say we can approach this one with cautious expectations.  But at least we got some sort of starting pitcher, which is a step in the right direction.  We also added Koji Uehara, who signed a one-year deal.  In thirty-six innings last year, he posted a 1.75 ERA and an 0.64 WHIP.  That means good late-inning work for us.

We finished the Zach Stewart trade by acquiring Kyle Kaminska from the Pirates and assigned him to the PawSox.  We also claimed Sandy Rosario from the A’s, and he has since been claimed by the Cubs.  Gary DiSarcina, formerly the Angels’ minor league field coordinator, is now the PawSox manager.

So we had gaps and voids, we identified them, and we set about filling them with solid, stable choices who will fit in both on the field and in the clubhouse.  We now have some powerful hitters and defenders in the lineup whose numbers admittedly were not great last year but who stand, given the right circumstances, to do great things, and we have some great additions to the clubhouse as well.  We also have a starter who’s spent hardly any time in the AL and whose time he did spend in the AL was nothing to write home about but who has considerable potential.  We still have a lot of work to do; we need more and better starting pitching, for one thing.  That’s a big one.  But slowly but surely we’re getting it done.  We don’t need to make the world’s biggest splash to put a team together that can go the distance.

In other news, the Pats beat the Dophins, 23-16, and the Texans, 42-14.

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Cut Down

Honestly, it doesn’t get much more infuriating than that.  I’m just going to jump right in because it’s really tough to deal with it all.

Cook pitched decently.  He only lasted five innings, and he gave up three runs on seven hits while walking none and striking out two.  He went one-two-three in the first and second, and gave up a double in the third.  He gave up a solo shot to lead off the fourth followed by a single and then a two-run home run.  Following  two quick outs, he gave up a single, and then a fielding error put another runner on, but the inning ended there.  He allowed a single in the fifth and a double to lead off the sixth, at which point he was replaced by Hill, who was replaced by Aceves after three batters.

Meanwhile, we reduced our deficit from three runs to two; in the bottom of the fourth, Pedroia doubled with one out and scored on a single by Loney.

Aceves came out for the seventh and gave up a single followed by a two-run home run of his own, which made the score 5-1.  Two outs later, he gave up a double and was replaced by Carpenter, who ended the inning.  In the bottom of the seventh, we made another dent in the score.  Ross began the inning by striking out, but then Salty and Nava hit back-to-back doubles.  The Yanks sent out their third pitcher of the inning, and then Salty scored on a groundout by Gomez and Nava scored on a double by Aviles.  5-3.

Carpenter handled the eighth without incident baseball-wise but with incident drama-wise; when Bobby V. came out to the mound and Aceves saw Carpenter coming in, he walked to the other side of the mound to avoid Bobby V. when he left the field.  In terms of the bottom of the inning, we failed to score.  But it was not without further drama.

Ross ended the inning on a called strike; the at-bat featured seven pitches, all but one of them sliders, and the count had been full.  Ross and everyone else who had a pair of decently functioning eyes could see that that last supposed strike was actually a ball because it was low, and he let home plate umpire Alfonso Marquez know it immediately. So Marquez rejected him; it was only the second rejection in Ross’s career.  Several minutes later, Bobby V., who had separated Ross and Marquez, went back out there to have a talk with him that obviously got heated pretty quickly and was ejected for the sixth time this year, which sets the record for the most single-season ejections by any manager we’ve ever had in our long, illustrious history.  And at some point even third base coach Jerry Royster was ejected for some reason, so bench coach Tim Bogar was managing and coaching third at the same time at the end of it all.  The whole situation was just absurd and could have been neatly avoided had Marquez just done his job and saw reality.

Anyway, Miller and Padilla teamed up to shut out the Yanks in the top of the ninth, and the stage was set for another possible walkoff.  Salty’s leadoff at-bat was exactly the kind of at-bat you hope for most in those situations.  The count was full and he got an eighty-three mile-per-hour slide as his sixth pitch.  He’s a big guy, and he unleashed his formidable power on it and sent it out of the park to right field for a solo shot that only he could have powered out of the park.  We were now one run away with nobody out, and between Salty having made it look so easy and our last-minute heroics of the previous night, we were daring to believe that we could potentially pull it off again.

But we didn’t.  Nava flied out, Gomez grounded out, and Aviles reached on a fielding error.  Ellsbury could have put the whole thing away right then and there.  But he grounded out instead.

So we lost, 5-4.  But no one can say we didn’t put up a fight.  Because we did, both literally and figuratively.  We manufactured our own runs and pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps in the face of a deficit and dared to call a ball, a ball.  We just kept going at it all night long, but we came up just short in the end.  It’s just so infuriating.  I mean, I have to think that we’ve lost this way to plenty of other teams this year since clearly we’re in the business of losing every way to every other team this year, but to do it against the Yankees is particularly brutal.  We were almost there; we just needed one more run to tie it, and we could take care of them in extras.  And we couldn’t get it done.  It’s the story of our 2012 baseball lives.

On a more cheerful note, we have next year’s schedule, so assuming that we’re optimistic, it’s a reminder of something to look forward to.  The season starts for us on April 1 in the Bronx; we follow Opening Day with a day off and then conclude the three-game series.  We then head off to Toronto for three games, and then we head home for our home opener against Baltimore, which is followed by another day off.  We then finish our series with Baltimore and play the Rays before spending three games in Cleveland and going back home to face the Royals, A’s, and newly-AL Astros.  Then we have a day off and we go back to Toronto and then to Arlington, our first full series of May.  The Twins and Jays comprise another homestand, followed by a day off and another road trip against the Rays, Twins, and Other Sox.  Then back home we’ve got the Tribe and the Phillies, followed by a series at Philadelphia and then the Bronx, followed by a day off.  That takes us to June, our first full series of which is at home against the Rangers and then the Angels.  Then we head off to Toronto and Baltimore before another day off and coming home to face the Rays.  Then we head off to Detriot before another day off and another homestand featuring the Rockies, the Jays, a day off, and the Padres in July.  Then it’s off to the West Coast for the Angels, Mariners, and A’s before the All-Star break.  When play resumes, we host the Yanks and Rays before a trip to Baltimore and a day off.  The west then comes to us as we host the Mariners and D-Backs at home, which brings us to August.  We then travel to Houston and Kansas City before taking a day off and traveling to Toronto.  We host the Yanks at home after that, followed by a trip to San Francisco, a day off, a trip to Los Angeles for the Blue Sox, another day off, and then a homestand featuring the Orioles, Other Sox, and Tigers, which brings us to September.  We go to the Bronx after that, take a day off, go to Tampa Bay, and return home for the Yanks, a day off, the Orioles, the Jays, and another day off.  Then we go to Colorado for two games, take a day off, and go to Baltimore for the last series of the season.  So we’ve got at least three days off every month except one: May, our most packed month, when we only have one day off.  But it’s a good schedule.  It’s interesting that Interleague is sort of spread out this year instead of being clustered in June.  It’s often a tough schedule, and we have to play some worthy opponents, but if all goes according to plan, we’ll be able to hold our own next year.

AP Photo

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Rolling Down

And the bad news just keeps on coming.  If we’re going to have a blockbuster September, it’s going to have to start today because it sure didn’t start yesterday or the day before.  We lost again.

Dice-K failed yet again.  So just to be clear, if it wasn’t clear enough already, Dice-K’s norm is being a fail, and when he has a good start, it’s a reason to celebrate.  So basically, in failing, Dice-K was normal.  That says something really sad, doesn’t it.

He began his start with a seven-pitch walk to Coco Crisp and followed that with a home run for two runs.  He then gave up a solo shot in the second.  He opened the third inning with another seven-pitch walk to Crisp, followed by a single and then a sac fly that brought in one run; one out later, he gave up a single and then a walk to load the bases.  Fortunately, he only gave up a single that scored one run in that situation.  Unfortunately, it didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things because, all else being equal, we would have lost anyway regardless of how many runs he allowed at that point.  The bases were loaded again in the fourth with one out, and again Dice-K limited but did not prevent the damage; he induced a groundout that scored one.

All told, he gave up six runs on seven hits over the course of three and two-thirds innings.  He walked four, struck out four, and took a well-deserved loss.

And then Miller replaced him and pitched the rest of the fourth as well as the fifth.  Breslow pitched a one-two-three sixth, Tazawa pitched a one-two-three seventh, and Melancon pitched the eighth.

Meanwhile, yet again, there is not much offense to report.  The only innings during which we had more than one runner on base were the innings during which we scored, and those were few and far between.  To be exact, there were only two of them.  That’s two innings during which we scored as well as a grand total of two runs scored; we spent more than half the game, five innings to be exact, going down in order.

Thanks two a walk and two back-to-back singles, it was our turn to load the bases with one out in the sixth.  Ross singled in Ciriaco from first, and Podsednik tried to score from second but was out at home.  And then Pedroia led off the ninth with a double, moved to third on a groundout by Ross, and scored on a sac fly by Gomez.

Pedroia had our only multihit game, and it was a great game at that.  He went three for four.  But it wasn’t enough.  The final score was 6-2.  So after being swept by the Angels, we also got swept by the A’s.  That means that we are nursing a six-game losing streak, the longest we’ve had all season long.  In those six games, we have only scored fifteen runs.

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Shelling

Zach Stewart was called up and given the start.  I don’t think this is a start he’ll want to remember.  I know it’s a start I don’t want to remember.  It didn’t go well.  A newcomer gets called up and all he wants to do is impress and impress and impress, and then when he doesn’t and instead he falls hard and fast, you can’t help feeling bad for the man but so much worse for the team and for you, who’s saddled with a loss as a result.

He never really had much of a chance in this one, unfortunately.  From the beginning you could tell that he was having an off night in a big way.  Most of his pitches stayed up in the zone, and the opposing hitters had no problem picking them out.

In the first inning alone, he gave up a single, an RBI double, an RBI single that advanced the runner even further thanks to a throwing error by Pedroia, and a two-run home run.  He gave up a double to lead off the second, which turned into a run on another RBI single.  He gave up his second leadoff double of the night in the third and, two outs later, gave up two consecutive RBI doubles followed by his second two-run home run of the night.

Yeah.  It was ugly.  He gave up nine runs on ten hits while walking none and striking out two over three innings.  He is our first pitcher to give up nine earned runs on ten hits since Howard Ehmke did it in 1923.  And he’s our first pitcher to allow nine runs in his first game with us.  Because thankfully he was relieved by Tazawa after that.  He took an extremely well-deserved loss, and that was the end of that.  The final score ended up being 10-3, and he gave up all but one of those runs in the first three innings.  Four runs in the first, one in the second, and four more in the third.  Wow.  That’s basically the exact opposite of the way you want a callup start to go.

Tazawa gave up the Angels’ tenth run in the fifth, when he gave up a walk and a single that was followed by a double play that brought the run in.  Then Miller pitched around a bases-loaded situation in the sixth, and Aceves pitched the seventh and eighth.

We scored our first run in the second, when Gomez and Aviles opened the inning with back-to-back singles; Gomez scored on a sac fly by Podsednik one out later.  We scored our remaining two runs in the fifth; Podsednik and Ciriaco opened the inning with back-to-back singles, Ellsbury grounded into a force out that eliminated Ciriaco, Ellsbury stole second base and Podsedik scored on a throwing error, and then Ellsbury scored on a single by Pedroia.

We hardly threatened after that.  We had two runners on in the eighth, and that was basically it for our big effort to overcome a seven-run deficit and score runs.

By the way, in case you forgot, Stewart came over from the Other Sox when we traded Kevin Youkilis.  So that’s what we get.

Chris Carlson

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Ironic Fail

Ugh.  That was a very difficult loss to take.  Not that we haven’t seen plenty like that already.  Then again, that’s part of what makes it so difficult to take.  In addition to the fact that you just don’t ever actually want to lose, I’m just so tired of losing all these games that we could just as easily win.  If we could just as easily win as lose, we should just win and be done with it.  We shouldn’t have had to lose this game.

I will say that Buchholz wasn’t stellar.  But he wasn’t terrible either.  He gave up four runs on six hits while walking three and striking out five over seven innings.  The second pitch he fired was hit for a solo shot, and then he gave up a walk and a single before getting a strikeout and then allowing a run on a sac fly.  He didn’t cause any further damage until the sixth, when he gave up another solo shot and another walk that turned into a run on a double.

In short, Buchholz was decent.  He wasn’t bad, and he wasn’t good.  He simply had a mediocre outing.  And the reason why it’s mediocre is because lately he’s been pitching so incredibly well.  If he had continued to pitch like he had when he was struggling during the first half, we might be labeling this a stellar start.  But it’s all relative.  For some pitchers this is stellar, and for some it isn’t.  Ideally, it shouldn’t be stellar for anyone on our staff; if this is what our pitchers’ off days were to look like, we’d be in great shape.

Anyway, it looked like Buchholz was receiving just enough support to get by.  After two quick groundouts in the second, Salty provided an answer for one of the Angels’ two runs.  The count was full, and he received a seventy-three mile-per-hour curveball that he clobbered out of the park toward right field.  He was all power, and he used that cannon of a swing of his and that ball was history.

Not so the Angels’ lead quite yet.  We tied it up and went ahead in the fourth.  Perdroia and Ellsbury hit back-to-back singles, and Lavarnway walked to load the bases.  Loney then singled in Pedroia, Salty singled in Ellsbury, and Kalish grounded into a double play that plated Loney.  So it wasn’t exactly a grand slam, but we manufactured our own runs and ended up clearing the originally loaded bases.  Lavarnway added some insurance in the sixth when he hit a sac fly that brought in Ellsbury, who had singled to start the inning.  Then, of course, Buchholz allowed more runs in the bottom of the sixth, but even with those runs we were still on top by one.  So the entity that would decide our fate in this one was the relief corps, specifically Aceves, who was reinstated and given the ball in the eighth.

He went one-two-three in the eighth.  One inning down, one to go, and we didn’t score in the top of the ninth, so it was all him.  And what did he do? He blew it.  He blew the save.  He induced a flyout but then hit a batter who stole second, issued a walk, and then gave up a single – it was barely a hit; it only just barely got past Pedroia’s dive – that scored one to tie it and then a sac fly that sealed the deal.

It was the Angels who walked away with the win, not us, and they did it in walkoff fashion.  Aceves was rewarded with a well-deserved blown save as well as a well-deserved loss.  The irony was that he was suspended because he marched into Bobby V.’s office and was angry that he wasn’t given the ball in Friday’s save situation.  But it’s pretty difficult to give him sympathy after last night’s performance, that’s for sure.

Tuscon Citizen

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