Nick Green Can Pitch

So I wasn't paying too much attention to the game last night because I had a quiz this morning I had to study for, and we were losing so bad it didn't seem to matter. Two things piqued my interest:

1) Ellsbury was replaced without me noticing. So when I looked at Gameday it said he'd been out at home...of course my immediate thought was F!--injury? Then I read this:

"Red Sox center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury suffered a mild left high-ankle sprain in Thursday's 9-5 loss to the White Sox, and his availability for Friday's series opener against the Blue Jays is uncertain." Francona said this: "We're certainly going to check with him. I don't think it will be anything more than a nagging thing, and I'm glad we took him out. Got some ice on it, got it treated, and I'm hopeful that it'll be fine.''

Jacoby Ellsbury cannot sit out. Final decision!

2) It was weird looking over at the game to check the score and seeing Nick Green pitching. So I had to stop studying and watch his 2 innings--he was not too shabby! Walked a couple guys but got out of his innings unscathed. Some comedy was even gleaned from the situation:

“After I got behind hitters the first inning I kind of got a little nervous because I just didn’t want to walk everybody,” he said. “I mean, I know how it is as an infielder to sit back there and watch ball, ball, ball, so I didn’t really want to do that and I did. The only reason I was successful is because my ball moved a little bit, but I didn’t know it was going to move. I was trying to throw it straight.”

And Youkilis, of course (backstory: Green had a ball come right back to him and nailed that sucker to Kotchman at first, which I immediately noticed and commented on. Apparently I was not the only one): “He’s gonna have to work on his PFE’s (pitcher fielding exercises) in spring training. That was ridiculous. I’m glad I wasn’t at first base. I probably would have thrown it back to him as hard as I could.”

He did it again: “I felt like I waited for him about 15 minutes to get over to first base, so when I catch the ball at shortstop to throw it over there he’s there. I’m like catching it and I’m like ‘Get over there!’”

The point of this long post: Ellsbury better be fine and Green can pitch in an emergency.

And I had Really good pictures to go with this post but Blogger sucks and I can't upload them. Time to change, I think!

That WAS what I was Hoping For!

Boston was really pissed yesterday, and they showed it with a frickin awesome 14-1 win over the Yanks. Youkilis, Pedroia, Martinez, Ortiz, Bay--they all had an awesome game and Youk even hit 2 home runs. They scored 13 out of their 14 runs with 2 outs!

And Tazawa? After complaining about Red Sox pitching yesterday, this guy made me unbelievably happy by throwing 6 shutout innings and even though he let some NYers get on, he never let them cross home plate. It was a great outing indeed.

And....this dude is my new favorite Yankee :)

So, let's talk negatives for a moment. The game was on FOX. So Tim McCarver talked (and went on for a good 10 minutes about his poorly hidden Derek Jeter love) nonsense, including these gems: "Tazawa's stuff is nowhere NEAR as good as A.J. Burnett's"--as Boston is up 7-0 against Burnett. He also tried to sound smart by saying the Food and Drug Act was passed in, what, 1906? Umm...I don't know where he was going with that, actually. But my favorite idiot saying came from his partner, Kenny Albert (what, no Joe Buck? What a shame...), when he said this, IN THE FIRST INNING: "Red Sox scoring all three of their runs in this inning."

I hate FOX!

Youkilis' Day

Another win for Boston yesterday, thanks to Kevin Youkilis, who went 4-for-5 with 4 RBI. He hit a 3-run homer over the Monster early in the game and just continued to play great after that. Lowell and Varitek drove in the other 2 for a final score of 6-4.

And I'm sorry, I know the Yankees aren't our main competition anymore, but if I don't mention that they lost 22-4 yesterday, it just wouldn't feel right. Chien-Ming Wang is 0-3 with an ERA of 34.50. Even Javier Lopez has a better ERA.

So Boston is in 4th place now, and Tampa Bay is in the bottom (as they should be!). Toronto is still in first, which is just weird.

A Very Good Look

I don't want to admit that I'm posting for one reason and one reason alone that is kind of weird, but here you go:

Please keep this look. Please!

Youk is Here to Stay

Good news out of Boston--

"According to ESPN.com, the Red Sox have avoided arbitration with Youkilis by signing him to a
four-year, $40 million contract. The deal reportedly includes an option for the 2013 season."

I think that is what many of us have been waiting for, for the Sox to lock up Youkilis. He's just one of those invaluable Red Sox guys.

Oh man...completely out of nowhere, but I just remembered Coco Crisp isn't on the team anymore. It seems like that happened so long ago. Aww, I will miss Coco. Where is he now? Kansas City? Eek.

Now what about Varitek??

Youkilis' Day

Well now that was just a fun game! Wakefield pitched a wonderful game, Youkilis hit his first ever grand slam, and the Sox moved up to just 1/2 game out of first place. The Rays have lost like 5 in a row or something, which is quite nice for us. Which means....if we win today and they lose, the Sox can enter the All-Star break in first place.

I did feel bad for the Orioles pitcher Liz, he got mauled and the announcers were saying he isn't really ready to pitch in the Majors yet but he had to with Baltimore's injuries. But these are the Red Sox, man....you can't throw in a weak pitcher against their bats!

Wrong Choice

Sabathia was listed first on 19 of 28 ballots cast by two writers in each AL city and totaled 119 voting points. Beckett received eight first-place votes and the Angels' John Lackey received one.

Beckett losing the Cy Young to Sabathia is the most perfect example I can think of as to why postseason performances NEED to be taken into consideration when deciding on these end-of-season awards. Because seriously...

Beckett owned Sabathia in the ALCS. TWICE.

And A-Rod will "most likely" get the MVP over Lowell. A man who contributed nothing to his team in the postseason vs. a man who won the WS MVP. And that first guy is picked to win?

How good can you be if your team doesn't make it to the postseason, or if you lose in the LDS?

I question how these things are decided. I am still really thrilled about Pedroia, but I am seriously disappointed that Beckett, who should have won, didn't.

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P.S. FINALLY! Youkilis shaved that horrible beard off (for charity of course)! You cannot tell me he doesn't look a million times better now:

Schilling's Back

Curt Schilling signed a one-year deal worth $8 million that could be worth as much as $14 million should he reach all the incentives in the package. That's good, hopefully he will have another good year...but maybe with a better win-loss record.

In other news, Kevin Youkilis won a Gold Glove for his awesomeness at first base. It was expected and totally deserved. He only had like 429088 consecutive error-free games...or something like that. Where is Lowell's, though?

Days I'm looking forward to:
11/12: Pedroia wins AL Rookie of the Year
11/13: Beckett wins the AL Cy Young
11/14: Lowell wins AL MVP

Yes, they will all win. Well, they SHOULD.

No Extras!

I hate it when games I assume are won turn out not to be sure things after all.

Here we are, in extra innings, after having a 6-4 lead going into the 9th inning. The worst part is Papelbon is the one who gave up a 2-run shot to put us into this 11th inning. It's so rare when he does stuff like this that it's kind of hard to believe it even happened. But everyone is human, or so they say.

So Julio Lugo has doubled, which is quite good. Youkilis is having a lengthy at-bat, he finally got to a full count after 8 pitches. And he walked! All those pitches he fouled off were worth it (TB manager Joe Maddon got ejected for that one). So now we have David Ortiz at the plate. Extra innings and we need some runs, this is where he loves to shine. Unfortunately, he just struck out.

One last chance in Manny Ramirez. On a side note, I'm listening to this Fray album and it's pretty good. But back to the game. What will Manny do? Ball one..foul..foul..(getting nervous)..ball two..OUT. To the bottom of 11 we go.

Nothing happened. 12th inning: ooooh! SIX runs! They totally doubled their score in one inning. TB did nothing in their half and we ended up winning 12-6 in 12.

They can be so good sometimes!

How Different

What a difference a few hours makes.

We won the first game today 13-3, with a Mike Lowell grand slam (!) and a fantastic pitching performance by Matsuzaka (8 IP, 3 ER). Over his last three starts, Matsuzaka is 3-0 with a 1.87 ERA. Oh yeah, and Lugo, Wily Mo, and Youkilis also had HRs in the game.

And then came the second game. Hansack started and gave up 4 over 4 innings. Not that bad. Then Pineiro came in and gave up 4 in 2. And Lopez allowed 3 in only one measly inning of work. Romero tried to end the bleeding, and he did, for one inning. But Donnelly came in after that to pitch the 9th, and totally gave up 3 runs. BULLPEN '06 RETURNS. We lost, embarrassingly, 14-0.

Those Yankees lost again - in awesome fashion. Johnny Damon pushed a non-HR ball into HR territory. Cano made 3 errors (though I kinda like that kid and do feel bad for him - he actually threw one ball off his foot after making a really good stop). Jeter was very un-clutch. Another one of their pitchers didn't make it through the first inning, though I can't be too happy about this one because Rasner ended up with a fractured finger. They have some BAD luck lately, somewhat reminiscent of a certain team from Boston late last season.