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Tuesday, March 25, 2008

1-0: Thoughts

-Any time your starting pitcher only goes five innings, you’re trailing in the ninth, Papelbon gives you a crappy outing, and you’re relying on a backup, rookie outfielder to drive in two runs, that’s definitely a win to put in The Bank – you know, the Bank you withdraw from when you blow leads, guys make boneheaded plays (see: Emil Brown today for Oakland), and you just have general bad luck overall throughout the year. Good win.

-I think everyone saw Dice-K’s early shakiness coming, but it was really nice to see him recover the way he did. I still say he is going to have a really good season. Also, how good was Bryan Corey? When it comes to reliable bullpen arms, you can never have too many – so let’s hope he becomes someone we can turn to. I don’t have much faith in Aardsma, although it is cool to have the first entry in the Baseball Encyclopedia on the Red Sox.

-I figured the game was over when Ortiz and Ramirez failed to drive in a runner in scoring position with one out in the 8th. ‘Lowell, Moss, Varitek’ didn’t inspire me with confidence going into the 9th.

-Why do teams continue to walk Ortiz to get to Ramirez in anything other than walk-off situations? Manny’s stats are absolutely absurd following intentional walks to Ortiz and he made the A’s pay again today. Didn’t they learn anything from the Angels series last year? Pitching to Manny is hard enough in general, doing it with runners on is even harder.

-The ‘6 AM opening game’ experience was pretty cool (although I think I’m ready for a nap now). As a college student, no time of day is weird to me, and I’m perfectly used to being awake for 6, 7, 8 hours after a Sox or B’s game. So the weirdest part of the experience for me wasn’t waking up at 5, it was the lack of gameday buildup on Opening Day. I walked out onto campus at around 11 and people had their Sox jerseys, caps and shirts on, but people are already talking about the game that was, rather than building up to the game. It’s odd.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

North Shore Navs story in Item today
http://www.itemlive.com/articles/2008/03/25/news/news25.txt