Back-to-Back-to-Back-to-Back! (Lucky Sevens)

What a glorious weekend in Red Sox Nation! Here's a recap of the games from Saturday and Sunday:

4/21 (7-5, Sox win)
4/22 (7-6, Sox win)

On Saturday Beckett benefited from a ton of offense and pitched well enough to hang on to the lead and move to 4-0 on the season. Ortiz hit a two run bomb, Coco went 2-4 and has a higher BA than Manny, Varitek also went 2-4 to continue his offensive recovery, and Pedroia sat out the game. As good of a game as it was, it was the easiest win the Sox had this weekend and probably the least memorable of the set, with the possible exception of Papelbon's save.

Sunday's game was pure insanity. Wright pitched solid through two innings, with Dice-K giving up 3 runs by the time the Sox got to bat in the 3rd. The first two batters were sent back to the dugout with nothing to show, sending Man-Ram to the plate. Then the flood gates opened... Manny homers, JD homers, Lowell homers, & Tek homers, back-to-back-to-back-to-back!! Sox take the lead, 4-3. Dice-K proceeded to give up two more runs, giving the Yanks the lead once more by a score of 5-4. Lowell homered again with two on in the 7th to give the Sox the lead for good at 7-5. One more Yankee run would come in with Okajima in relief for Dice-K in the 8th, but Donnelly came in to get the last two outs and Papelbon shut them down in the 9th with some game-saving help from his brand new best friend Pedroia at second. Pedroia also looked good offensively, slapping a nice double down the left field line past A-Rod and making solid contact in each at bat. Plus it was fitting watching A-Rod fail to step up in the clutch against us yet again, despite his incredibly hot April. Overall, my stomach was in knots the whole time... what a great example of the tension & suspense that makes baseball the best sport there is.

While I have very few negatives to highlight from Sunday's performance, there were a few.

1. Coco started the game on the bench, possibly due to an injury sustained on Friday night, but barring that I thought it was foolish to leave him out in favor of WMP when he's showing signs of coming out of his slump.
2. The Yankees came into town with several key players on the DL. If it took this level of heroics to pull off a sweep in April, there might be cause for concern once the Evil Empire's healthy again.
3. We left 22 men on base and had only one run-scoring hit with men in scoring position, namely Lowell's home run in the 7th. Not good, but at least we still pulled it off.

As of this morning the Sox have won 5 in a row & have the best winning percentage in all of baseball, .706. Beckett leads the majors with 4 wins and Dice-K is 3rd in the majors with 31 K's. Not bad after a 3-game set with the Yankees.

The Jays are in town tonight for a quick two game set starting @ 7:05. We get a repeat of the Ohka vs. Wakefield game we saw in Toronto, and with the Jays on a 5-game slide hopefully it'll have a similar outcome!

Dice-K's the new Wakefield

You can't help but feel bad for Daisuke after yesterday's game. He was throwing beautifully until it all came unravelled in the 4th. Between the call at the plate that got him rattled (sorry all, that was a ball...), the screw up by Lugo (knew it would happen eventually), and getting robbed on Lowell's throw to first it was a mess. But to his credit he got out of the inning and came back to own the Jays for the next two innings. Hideki pitched an awesome inning too, striking out the side, and even Pinero looked good. But, once again, the Sox bats failed to come to life and give this kid some support. Hell, he's done all we can really ask of any pitcher in his first three starts, and has a record of 1-2 to show for it.

This brings us to the offense... props to WMP for that monster of a homerun up on top of the old restaurant. I don't think I've ever seen a ball hit that far in Toronto. But man, 1 run on 7 hits when the Jays only had three 3 hits the whole game. Manny needs to shave his head or something, the dude needs to wake up already cuz .205 with no homers just ain't his style. Youk, Ortiz, and Lugo all went 0 for 4. Then there's Tek... give up hitting lefty and focus on just one side of the plate, please!!! I really think he'd be way better off spending his time in the cage focused on hitting from one side, but we probably won't see that happen. Ahh yes, and Coco... nice game yesterday going 2-4, got the average back up to .150. Let's hope he can keep it up. Anyway, Wakefield goes tonight, let's hope we can turn it around against Ohka who's 0-1 with a 7.84 ERA. Then maybe we'll have a chance of improving on last year's record of 7-12 against the Jays.

Can't win 'em all...

Wow, aside from the major news outlets there's been surprisingly little written about last night's game - even dirt dogs hasn't been updated yet. Having been there I figured I'd give you all a first hand account of the game (I'll try to post the pics I took sometime later on in the day).

The atmosphere was electric, everyone there knew they were about to witness history. The park had a genuinely international feel with so many Japanese fans in attendance, all holding their signs and counting Dice's strikeouts. There was even one kid who had on the jersey from his team in Japan.

We were sitting about 10 rows back from Pesky's Pole and out trotted Dice-K for his stretching routine and warm-up tosses. The fans started to gather around us to take pictures and everyone was standing and cheering his name. Eventually he moved to the pen for a few more tosses and then shortly after the team took the field and he headed out to the mound.

The first pitch to Ichiro was insanity, I've never seen so many flashbulbs going off at the same time. He ended up getting the out and everyone stayed on their feet for the second batter and then finally settled into their seats with the third. Then the Sox got to bat for all of 3 minutes before heading back out on defense.

I won't go into all the minute details of the game, but it suffices to say that Matsuzaka had an OK game but wasn't as on point at Hernandez was. The Sox could barely keep up with his fastball, not to mention his slider and curve. Everything they hit looked weak with the exception of a fly out to left field. Even JD Drew's hit was nothing special, aside from continuing his hitting streak. As the game wore on the crowd become noticeably disappointed, as we were all hoping for a Dice-K win in his first start, but as it became clear that wasn't going to happen people started to root for a no-hitter by Hernandez. It seemed like the loss would be OK with everyone if we got to see a no-hitter in person, even if it was thrown by the opposing team. As it turned out even that wasn't meant to be, but I guess that's why baseball is so much fun, you never know what's going to happen... And now, after pitching two scoreless games, Hernandez is the one being called a phenom. I wonder how Dice is feeling today...

All that aside, here's hoping we can get today's game in and get Wakefield some runs!!

The time has come (almost)!

Wow, talk about a hell of a home opener... hard for things to go any better than they did yesterday (Box Score). Beckett went seven innings, threw 83 pitches, struck Ichiro out three times, had 8Ks overall on the day, and let up only two hits, bringing his WHIP down to 0.67 for this ever so young season.

What else... Drew had his first homer, Tek did well towards pulling himself out of his slump, there was an almost brawl that will hopefully continue into today, and the starters were getting pulled by the 5th inning to give the bench players a change to play. All in all a shalacking that I'm sure the Mariners will be looking to reverse tonight.

Today's game is between Dice-K and the "ace" of the Mariners, Felix Hernandez, who struck out 12 in his last start against the A's. Of course that was back on April 2nd, so hopefully things have changed since then... I'm expecting a pitchers duel all the way around tonight, between Matsuzaka will be on point for his first home start and the Sox bats are going to be fairly quiet after all the work they got yesterday. Sometimes a team can use up all of it's offense for a few days in one game, and I have an odd feeling that's what we'll see today.

Welcome Home!!

It's been a few days since my last post, so let me jot down a few observations from the past few games before getting to today's game...

Daisuke obviously pitched a great game last week, as did his opponent Zack Greinke. It was little annoying how big a deal the announcers (at least on WEEI) kept making about Greinke's anxiety issues, but what can you do? One run (a home run), 10K's, 7IP, not a bad day for a guy who's never pitched in the US before.

The 2-0 loss to Texas in Wake's first start was a tough one to take. The team picked up right where it left off with the lack of run support for this guy. Let's hope they can turn that around in the next couple of starts he has.

Then there was the 8-4 loss the next day in Tavarez's first start... pretty much a messy game and I gave up on the boys a bit too early to even comment much on that one.

The 3-2 win in the last game of the series was, for me at least, the best game of the trip. Schilling looked SO much better than he did in his first start which was a relief. Papi's bat came back to life with 2 home runs and 3 RBIs, and after the pen almost blew the game Paps came in to save the day with 5 straight outs. Hell of a game guys!

I expect Beckett to have a decent game today and pick up the win. Seattle hasn't played in ages with all of their games in Cleveland getting snowed out, so they'll probably need a game or two to get warmed up again. There was a really nice ceremony before the game for the '67 team, kind of wish I could've seen that but maybe NESN will be replaying it tonight. Ahh, one more day until my first trip to Fenway since I was 8 years old... I can't wait!!

Beckett and Dice-K's debuts

Well, we're roughly 10 minutes from Dice-K's debut... Don't know who decided this game should be at 2pm, but I've got my brand new radio ready to go to listen from work. Gotta say I'm pretty excited given last night's game. I don't have much time to write about it but Beckett looked good despite not having much control. He didn't get rattled while Lowell was making 2 errors behind him and in several cases he hung in there and got the outs he needed (going from 3-0 to striking that guy out was pretty sweet). I've got high hopes for him this season.

Quick thoughts:

• Lowell's errors were a one time thing, they'll be a little less than half of his total for the season if he puts them out of his mind.
• I'm liking this Ortiz, Ramirez, Drew combo already and Drew's catch in the outfield was NICELY done!
• The pen did a hell of a job last night, let's hope they can keep it up.
• The Pirates swept their opening series?!? Congrats!