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.