Some good stuff happened
this Memorial
Day weekend. Some bad stuff, too.
Good: David
Wells pitched brilliantly.
Bad: For just four and a
third innings. Until he was kneecapped
by Travis Lee’s hard line drive and fell to the ground into a writhing,
roly-poly heap of excruciating pain.
Good: Despite initial
doom-saying, subsequent examination showed it only to be a deep contusion, with
no structural damage. He might
only have to miss one start. (A dialing-down of some initial
optimism.) Of course, he might also have to go
on the DL. Let’s hope for the best, but proceed guardedly.
Good: Ortiz
beat the shift, and we beat Scott Kazmir.
Good: Jonathan Papelbon set
a rookie record for most successful save opportunities to start a season with
his 17th. (He got another one the next night for an even 18.) And he got a day off
for his troubles.
Bad: Manny
missed two games due to back and knee problems.
Good: Kevin
Youkilis filled in ably in left field — for the first time ever.
Good: Curt
Schilling won his 200th game. (I was there, and screamed myself hoarse
hollering for his curtain call.)
Bad: Mike
Timlin and Wily Mo Pena went on the DL with a tired arm and sore wrist,
respectively.
Good: Coco
Crisp came off it after 43 games, playing his first Fenway game on Sunday
and hitting his first homer in a Red Sox uniform on Monday.
Good: We rode a dominant
Tim Wakefield performance for eight strong innings.
Bad: We almost blew it
thanks to some truly asshatian ninth-inning pitching from Seanez
and Tavarez. (Five walks — four of them with two outs — between them, not
including a Mirabelli passed ball on a swinging strike three that would have
ended the game.)
Good: We secured the
four-game sweep, barely,
thanks to even more asshatian third-base-coaching from the (Devil)
Rays and Willie
Harris’s dead-on throw.
Good: En fuego Mark Loretta
extended his hitting streak to 14 games. He’s batting .317 now. (.448 in the
last week.) Remember when it was at .207? You should it was barely three weeks
ago.
Bad: Matt
Clement continues to cast a pall over this team. We all knew what was gonna
happen last night. And despite two scoreless innings to start, the Incredible
Sulk fulfilled our worst expectations of him. He’s just not a good pitcher at
this point. He’s abominable. Just awful. And we’re
stuck with him. Or are we? We
should DL him. Even if it’s with a case of the Hellenic
Flu. Then, two weeks hence, send him to the PawSox for a lengthy stint to
get his head together. In the mean time, Jon Lester or Craig Hansen certainly
couldn’t be worse. At the very least, they could give us the three or four
innings he gives us, probably without digging us in a six-run hole.
Good: Homers from number
eight hitter Coco Crisp, and Manny and Tek were enough to erase the deficit
Clement had buried us under after just three and a third innings.
Bad: David Riske’s meatball
across the plate on an 0-2 count to Shea “I’ll
Swing at Anything” Hillenbrand was the difference maker. The fact that
Jermaine Van Buren and Manny Delcarmen had pitched so well just prior was only
salt in the wound.
Oh well. You take the good
with the bad.
And right now, at least,
there’s more of the former than the latter. Let’s get ‘em tonight.