It's simply too late at night for me to go into great detail in regards to tonight's debacle of a performance by the Sox. One thing is for sure, the so-called "mental advantage" the Sox supposedly had over the Yanks this season is long, gone, and hard to find.
Instead, despite it being only one game, the momentum and mental advantage seems to have clearly moved 300 miles south of Beantown. All the local sportswriters in both cities have been calling for the Yankees to roll over the Sox in this series, with the only win expected for Boston coming in tomorrow's game solely because of their ace Josh Beckett....but with the offensive inconsistency, a full four game sweep is expected by some.
Since these two teams last met they have been heading in completely opposite directions. What's funny is that you can almost tie the Sox performance to the hot and cold nature of J-Bay's season. They were an unbeatable monster until early June, when both Bay, and the rest of the team fell into a slump of mediocrity. ITM note: the 2004 Boston Red Sox played like crap (around .500) for 3 months in what will always be the greatest season ever.
The blame for the turn of events can be shared by nearly everyone, but tonight it was undoubtedly John Smoltz failing to come through. Going into the game I said to Joe Murph, "this is why we got Smoltz in the first place, for big games like this, on the big stage, when the Sox are in need of some pitching help."......well Samsonite, I was way off. Once again a big inning sunk his battleship and he was unable to make it through 4. A pitiful showing on the biggest stage in baseball while taking part in the greatest rivarliy in all of sports. Nothing about tonight's performance (or anything thus far this season for that matter) indicates to me that Smoltz is a value-added addition to this team. Stick a fork in him, he's done. Just consider his last four starts:
W-L: 1-3
IP: 20
Hits: 35
ER: 24
HR: 8
You guys don't need me to do the math...those numbers just suck. T Murph could take Smoltz yard, and he gets thrown through tables at bachelor parties for fun.
Looking for Beckett to bail us out tomorrow....
Thursday, August 6
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3 comments:
smoltz = a bust
A bust indeed but we may have to deal with a few more starts. Too many injuries. Almost wish we have Masterson right now.
I somewhat agree about Masterson, but let's not forget that he wasn't exactly pitching well when he left Boston. In fact, his innings and appearances went way down over the past month or so because of his inability to command the strike zone.
He'll likely be a good pitcher for a major league club someday, but I'm not sure having him right now (especially over V-Mart) would give us all that many answers.
Go Sox.
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