So do we think Lackey will throw 115+ pitches tomorrow night? (Photo courtesy of Kelly O'Connor/sittingstill.net and used with permission)
Well this feels quite good.
The last time the Red Sox went into a day off coming off of a win? The day after Opening Day – 24 days ago. To be fair, the Sox have only had four off-days this month, but still…nice to have a day with no Red Sox baseball where I don’t have to read about how horrible the Sox are and what fools Red Sox fans are for supporting them. It’s a well-earned day off for the team, especially the pitchers.
I’m not pretending it’s all sunshine and lollipops for the Red Sox but there are definitely all kinds of good signs.  Of course, I’d rather our starting rotation didn’t have to begin the year all throwing well over 100 pitches just so we can stay away from the bullpen (I have visions of the entire rotation going on the DL with “tired arm” in July) but right now beggars can’t be choosers.
The Sox head into Baltimore for a weekend series against the Orioles. The O’s play the rubber game against the Yankees tonight and have a chance to win the series and go into the Sox series with some momentum. I certainly want the Yankees to lose and, as long as it isn’t against the Red Sox, I almost always want the Orioles to win…I just don’t want them TOO confident for their weekend facing John Lackey, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Josh Beckett.
On a more serious note, it was 3 years ago today that Josh Hancock died in a car accident. I was sitting in Professor Thom’s in New York on a Sunday morning waiting to watch the Yanks/Sox game with New York-based Sox fans when NESN announced his death. It put a surreal cap on what was a surreal weekend (which included my meeting Kyle Snyder for the first time) and it makes me think about how MLB encourages drinking with all their beer and alcohol ads (not only in the park but on their broadcasts) and then wonders why their players sometimes think nothing of using the substances that MLB forbids. Not making any kind of judgment on drinking being better or worse than drugs but when I think about how alcohol is, essentially, embraced by MLB even after something like Hancock’s death, I remember that the bottom line will always be more important to MLB than the actual humans who make MLB all of its money and it pisses me off. I’m not asking for prohibition but I’d like MLB to be a bit more responsible. In a perfect world, we wouldn’t be staring at gigantic Budweiser signs every time we walk into a ballpark.
Four afternoon games around Major League Baseball today so if you’re looking for a fix you can find it somewhere out there!