 Haven’t used any Kyle Snyder photos for good karma in a while. Kyle struck out 7 in his latest appearance with the Buffalo Bisons! (Photo by Doug Benc/Getty Images North America) |
Well that didn’t go as planned.
Thanks to one of Wake’s patented “this inning is going sour quickly and we don’t have a guy up in the bullpen yet” innings and the fact that the team couldn’t get men in scoring position to actually make it home, Sox break the Blue Jays 9-game losing streak.
Can’t have any hard feelings about Wake. Guy’s been a horse thus far. The hitters, on the other hand, I can fault (not-so) happily.
But let’s focus on the positive. How about Daniel freaking Bard, eh? Five consecutive strike outs of the 8 bats he faced? Quite impressive, kid, quite impressive.
Last night, Amalie Benjamin wrote on Twitter: “Not a lot of glory in being the team that ends another team’s nine-game losing streak.” I have to disagree. Well, maybe not “disagree” but I don’t think she is looking at it the right way. Do the players look at each other and think “Ugh, we just lost to a team that lost 9 in a row” or do they think “The Law of Averages caught up with them and we were unlucky enough to be the team they were playing”? To lose 10 in a row is huge. To lose a dozen in a row even worse. Did anyone think the Blue Jays were going to lose 12 straight games? I didn’t. I wanted them to but I didn’t think it would happen.
As I wrote in response to that Tweet, the odds of the Sox winning the next 2 just went up. It’s unfortunate that the loss came on a night when the Yankees won, placing them a half game ahead of the Sox to, temporarily (!) own first place but what are you going to do?
One note about the Yankees game: Pettitte came out of the game after getting himself in trouble. Two on, no out and a 2-0 count to the batter he was facing. He looked fine walking off the field but it gave the relief pitcher as much time as he wanted to warm up. There was no visible injury and when he threw his last pitch he didn’t grab himself or limp or wince. He hurt his back on Monday and, according to Peter Abraham, had been fighting through pain up until Girardi took him out. Also according to Abraham, Pettitte says he’ll definitely make his next start. I don’t know…sounds suspiciously like the old Roger Clemens trick of suddenly being injured to get out of a game. Although Pettitte was winning when he left his game. It sounds more like Girardi wanted his struggling starter out of the game before it got out of hand and pulled the “he’s injured” card so his reliever could get more warm-up time on the mound. Part of me wonders why Tito didn’t try this (hey, Wake has had a bad back in the past). “Oops he’s hurt! Let’s take him out and get someone else in there quickly!” Another part of me is very glad that Tito’s mind doesn’t work like Joe Girardi’s. Of course, I feel differently if it turns out Pettitte misses his next start and is genuinely hurt. For now, I don’t believe it for a second. Girardi got a fresh arm in there to take as many wam-up tosses as he needed and stopped what could have turned into a really ugly inning. Good managing or just more slimeballiness from Girardi? I suppose a little of both.
And the first one to tell me Pettitte wouldn’t be involved in such chicanery needs to be reminded of this.
Speaking of PED users: Bud Selig has decided that he’ll have to give some thought as to what to do if Manny Ramirez gets voted into the All Star Game. Seriously, I’d like to find every idiot who voted for him and slap them. Give your vote to a player who hasn’t been caught cheating. What a novel idea! And you can come back with “For all we know they’re ALL cheating” and that is very well true, but I don’t care. I’m not out to hang witches. If a player has been caught or admits to using then he cheated. I’m not pointing to every player who does well and say “He MUST be cheating!”. That’s bull. We KNOW Manny cheated. THIS YEAR. Why vote him in to the All Star Game when he is serving a suspension for that instead of playing baseball?
A quick shout-out to schadenfreude:
Brett has decided to have surgery,” added Amaro. “And it’s likely we’ll be missing him for a significant amount of time. We don’t know how much time, but he has elected to have surgery.”
According to a team spokesman, Myers was unavailable for comment.
It’s sad when bad things happen to good people isn’t it? Oh wait…
The Sox and Jays play at 1:07pm EST! So nice to have a Saturday game played in the early afternoon. I had considered live blogging it but won’t be. Tomorrow is still a possibility – we’ll see how the stars align for it. Today Brad Penny pitches against Brian Tallet. For as much of a hard time as I’ve given Penny this year, he’s been pretty solid for the Sox. We don’t need a stopper today we need a STARTER. Someone to start the winning series! I’ll be thrilled with the Sox leaving Toronto having won 2 out of 3. But for that to happen, GOOD Brad Penny needs to show up today (along with a bunch of hitters who don’t keep leaving men on, thanks!).