Having said that, I'm beginning to feel like this current Red Sox team may not be able to hold on much longer with the pitching staff as it is currently constructed. While the Sox are fortunate to have two legitimate number 1 starters at the front of the rotation, what sits behind them is... well... to call it abhorrent would be kind, at this stage. Becket and Lester are top-notch, and the team should expect to win every time they take the mound, but Becket is hurt (still don't know for how long... I have a feeling it might be longer then the 10 days I keep hearing... my bet is closer to 20 days), and Lester is capable of throwing a stinker still, every once in a great while. Meanwhile the Sox have behind that John Lackey, Eric Bedard, Tim Wakefield, and the rotting corpse of Andrew Miller. I have not been as quick to jump on Lackey prior to this season because, well... by the end of last season his numbers were pretty much what they should have been expected to be: good, not great. That the Sox ponied up money as if he were great is not Lackey's fault. This season is entirely different. Lackey isn't earning MY salary at this point... He's been terrible; his body language sucks, he sneers at teammates when they don't bail him out, and gets smacked around like a pinata at a 6-year old's birthday party. There's no chance I would put the ball in his hands in ANY game that counted at this point... I would keep him off the post-season roster altogether, should we get there, just to avoid even the temptation of using him out of desperation. He's that bad at this point... (as I write this, he's just come out of the game in the third inning after giving up yet another laser shot up the middle... this one hit him. I'm betting he's in the clubhouse right now sneering in the mirror and blaming his reflection for the poor outing... his line: 3IP, 5H, 5R, 3W, 2K, and one long home run by John Jaso... yeah... the .221 hitting John Jaso. Blech.).
I love Tim Wakefield... I have for a long time... this guy has done everything this team has asked of him for well over a decade, and I want him to get his 200th win. But I also want to win the friggin division. And right now those two goals appear to be mutually exclusive. At this point Wakefield's best role would be in a long relief role. I'm sorry... but my loyalty to ANY individual player ends in the wins and losses column, as it should with Terry Francona. When we have a post-season birth sewn up you can march him out there every 3rd day if you want and let him try to get his 200th. Till then, I'm sorry the guy shouldn't start anymore games.
And, it's time for Theo Epstein to suck it up and accept that the other GMs who had given up on Andrew Miller and his lightning-blessed arm knew what they were doing, and he's not going to have the magic solution that they didn't have. Miller has a live arm, and at times looks dominating. But those stretches are few and far between. He can't throw strikes consistently. Period. I don't care if you throw 102 with a hook that drops from your ear you your ankle... if you can't throw strikes, you will be forced to "place" pitches to get them, and you will get hammered. There... I've just described Andrew Miller's entire professional career. And it's not going to change at this point, I'm convinced. It's time to pull the plug and give up on this one.
Erik Bedard is a bit of a different story... I actually think he's pitched pretty well for the MOST part since coming over from Seattle... but he's just not 100% healthy... he's still effectively rehabbing from his knee injury, and tweaked it again this week. I think the guy will be a contributor and a solid number three for a few years, but right now he's just not... there. You can't count on him.
And that's where we are at this point. We've got nothing... honestly... NOTHING after 1 and 2. You simply can't win that way, and if we don't find something of use from the minor-leaguers we brought up, like Weiland or Dubront, I think we might actually be in jeopardy of letting the Rays catch us up. With their win tonight they are now only 5 back in the loss column. Now a couple of wins in the next couple of nights can effectively shut the door on that possibility, but the Rays have the very good Hellickson going tomorrow against the thus far over-matched Kyle Weiland. I would consider it a minor upset for the Sox to win that one... which would mean they really MUST win on Sunday when Lester pitches against James Shields.
I'm really not one to rush to panic, but the Yankees series last week opened up my eyes to the very delicate state of the Sox pitching, and if they do lose these next two games... well... I might jump on the panic button with both feet.
No comments:
Post a Comment