You Got Your Offense In My Defense! Sox Bats Defy 'Bridge Year' BS

The Red Sox are leading THE MAJORS or are right behind the leader in plethora of offensive categories  right now. Yeh, you heard me right: The entire major league.

Don't believe me? Take a look at the numbahs:

• #1 in Hits with 689 (Number 2? The Kansas City Royals; I know, it's totally crazy)
• #1 in Doubles with 174
• #1 in RBI with 373
• #1 in Runs with 390
• #1 in Total Bases with 1158
• #2 in Average at .278 (Number 1? The Kansas City Royals at .279)
• #2 in Home runs with 93 (Number 1 is still the Blue Jays)
• #2 in On-Base Percentage at .353 (A tie with the Braves of Hotlanta; That team from the Bronx leads at .359)
• #3 in Walks with 277 (behind that team from the Bronx and the Braves of Hotlanta)

The team who plays on Yawkey Way are middle of the pack in one category: Strike Outs. They currently rank 17th which is fairly decent. At the bottom of that list are the Chicago White Sox and, once again, the Kansas City Royals.

If only the Royals had a few more decent starters... Speaking of Kansas City, they could be a team the Red Sox try to bargain with for a trade. Gordon Edes of ESPN started dropping some names recently and he mentioned Scot Podsednik as a target for Theo. He hits, he steals bases and he runs the bases well... I have some other ideas on potential targets, but more on that later.

Despite all this offense, the Red Sox have to be on the market for an impact outfielder with the injuries to Ellsbury, Cameron, Hermida and now, Drew. Drew is supposed to play tonight in Colorado, but I will not be surprised if Tito gives him more time off to let that hamstring calm down. Luckily, he did not land on the DL, but you'd be foolish to rule that out with Stephen's older, richer brother.

While the team-offensive numbers have been solid, the overall offensive contributions from outfielders are tenuous aside from Drew. Sure, there have been great rookie moments from McDonald and Nava, and some nice lefty at bats from Hermida (who is hurt), but let's be clear: We cannot expect these triple-a guys (and an inconsistent Bill Hall, who is really a back-up infielder) to go the rest of the season. In an effort to reach the playoffs, the Red Sox need another Ellsbury-type player who can get on base consistently, be a real base-stealing threat and generally be a nuisance to pitchers.

Looking at the outfield, Edes recently examined the offensive state of these players:

Relying on patchwork combinations that have featured McDonald, Jeremy Hermida and Bill Hall, with a cameo appearance by rookie Josh Reddick and now the latest import from Pawtucket, Nava, the Sox outfield collectively ranks next to last in the league in hitting (.257), 12th in OBP (.329), seventh in slugging (.421) and fifth in home runs (22).

And now I digress on Mike Cameron... I was doing a little research on contracts and still cannot believe Theo gave him over $7 million dollars. Yeh, he can play the outfield, but you had to know his age was a bit of a liability. Considering the abdominal injury and his lack of everyday status at present, perhaps now is the time to package him up with someone from the minor leagues and let him and his lousy batting average, lack of power and ZERO stolen bases go elsewhere.

[Image by therob006 via Flickr CC 3.0]

Lester Back to Dominate Form in Shutout, Sox Sweep Jays

Jon Lester had his best outing of the year giving up only 2 hits and striking out 11 Blue Jay batters. He threw 119 pitches over 7 full innings.

The kid was awesome. All of his pitches were moving, biting and hitting spots in the zone.

Moved his cutter in and out, and used the change-up and curve for a ton of swing and miss strikes. Nothing rattled the lefty. When the Jays had runners on and were threatening, Lester was able to muscle his 95 mph fastball past swinging Jays batters.

Lester, who has had problems with walks this season, limited the base-on- balls to only 2 in this outing. A very good sign.

It went Lester for seven, Bard for one, then to Paps for the save (who has 7 saves in 7 opportunities). This is the kind of shutdown pitching we have come to expect from Lester and the power arms in the pen.

Lester dropped his ERA to 4.71.

The Jays lefty starter Brett Cecil stifled the Sox for 6 innings, but gave up a double to Darnell McDonald, who was later knocked in by Lil Shit on a sac fly for the first run of the game. McDonald has been consistently getting on base and contributing.

One thing to note about last night's game was the benching of Ortiz against another lefty starter. V-Mart was the DH and Varitek caught Lester. Is this the trend we should expect to see? Righty bats against lefty starters? Lowell made a number of DH appearances against lefty's and as a pinch hitter.

Ortiz and his lack of production is finding its way to the bench more often than not, as is Varitek behind the dish. It's been hard to ignore Tek's contribution to the offense, but I'm not confident it will sustain the season. I hope he proves me wrong.

With the sweep of Toronto, the Sox move ahead in the standings to third place behind that team from the Bronx and the Rays. Sox are back to .500 at 11-11 behind first place by 5.5 games. In the last 10 games, the Red Sox are 7-3 with a solid road record.

On to Camden in B-More where it will be so very nice to keep the winning-vibe flowing.

The key outing to watch this weekend against the O's will be the return of Dice-K on Saturday. A healthy and effective Matsuzaka could be a welcome distraction from the struggles of Josh Beckett and parts of the bullpen.


[Image by clareperretta via Flickr CC 3.0]

I Rest My Case

Sure, Wakefield didn't pitch particularly well and after the first inning it seemed like they weren't going to score again until the next game (maybe), but then the bullpen came together, the offense broken their 0-for-32 with RISP streak, and the defense didn't commit any errors.

Well, unless you count those nine stolen bases.

But the stolen bases were in the first half of the game, right? The bad half of the game, where it seemed like Boston was going to lose its sixth straight game and look pretty terrible in the process. The good half of the game was pretty awesome, because the ratio of runs given up to runs scored suddenly flipped, the score tied up, and a 31-year-old AAAA player named Darnell McDonald who had just came up from Pawtucket to replace the injured Ellsbury got to be a hero twice. In fact, he got to be a hero by bashing opposite field balls over and off the Monster, so not only is the guy giving the Sox their first piece of good news in a long time an underdog hero, but he did it in the old-school Red Sox style.

So: take away the day games and suddenly the Sox get a win. So my theory clearly has merit. Especially after I conveniently ignore that the two pitchers who served up the heapin' helping of come-from-behind victory were Darren Oliver (of long-standing Red Sox infamy) and Frank Francisco, who as a closer has more hits than strikeouts and innings put together. Hopefully the Sox will ignore those two as well and use the confidence boost from last night's win to get back on the victory bandwagon.