Champions on Display MLB

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

I'm not discussing it. What is there to discuss? The Sox looked like some double-A backwater crew against the Rays. How to sum it up? Tito had Dustin Pedroia lay down a bunt. Pedroia, the only consistent batter and fielder on the Sox. The only guy hitting for power and average and on-base percentage.

He bunted.

That was in the first inning, and right there you knew it was over for the game. And it was.


The season so far has been a mess with injuries decimating the outfield, the starting pitching struggling to be consistent and the defense acting more porous than your common-variety sponge. It's easy to get nervous right now, though we'd all do well to remember that the Yanks stunk it up out of the gate in 2009. And we know how that horror-show ended...lousy SOBs.

But something has to happen. The first step occurred today when Mike Cameron was assigned to the DL and Josh Reddick was called up. That gets Bill Hall out of the outfield, which is a good thing indeed. Sadly, it also means J.D. Drew stays in the lineup. How are those metrics making him look this year, Theo?

But I think the Sox have to get a little more aggressive here. Victor Martinez is killing the Sox with his mediocre offense, which looks great compared to his abysmal defense. Why not move Martinez to DH and bring up Dusty Brown to be the catcher for the short-term? His hitting has been average in the Bucket, but at least he can throw a guy out who is trying to steal second. And yes it means someone more established has to go down. You know what? I don't care. Outside of Pedroia and Youk to a lesser extent, no one has stepped up at all this year.

The Sox start a three-game set against the Rangers. Anyone want to bet how this will turn out? If you guessed on batters striking out in key situations and at least one boneheaded error per game, you're probably right.

Anyway, let's end this on a better note. Over the next few days I am going to try and get a couple of book reviews up on SvS. The first one is "Red Sox by the Numbers". The second is Doug Glanville's new book "The Game From Where I Stand". I might try to do that one first. But either way, both reviews should be out before the end of the week...I hope.

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