As the Denial Fades, the Pain Remains

Last night, the Rays handled the Red Sox and rolled into the World Series. They did it with an overpowering starter who, all strops and headcase reactions aside, could become one of the best in baseball. They did it with a closer who had never close a game before, but may be the  best pitching prospect in baseball (who said losing never pays?). They did it the right we, and Boston just got flat out beat.

So why hadn't I been posting about this string of crazy events that led to this inexplicable Game 7 ... and it's subsequent Red Sox meltdown? Like so many superstitious Sox fans I thought I was on to something. Maybe checking in on the blog was bad luck, so I did away with it, hoping to spur on Boston and then resume blogging in the World Series.

Evidently it came up one or two Jason Varitek hits short.

Was it a memorable series? Absolutely. It was beyond that. But that doesn't make the Game 7 loss that much easier, particularly considering Jon Lester's strong start less than a week after he was shelled by the same team.

In fact, no matter how one tries to step back from the scene and take everything in, it's impossible not to be struck with the distinct feeling that, as good as the Red Sox were at times during the year, and as good as they were against the Angels in the ALDS, they just ran out of bullets. Missing Mike Lowell and a legitimate fourth playoff pitcher -- check out Tim Wakefield's splits in recent ALCS performances and you'll see what I mean -- they just didn't have the ammunition to go seven games with the Rays. Somehow they got there anyway, and the Rays came up with just enough plays to get through.

Will the Sox bounce back? Sure. But the franchise faces a lot of difficult offseason decisions about it's future. We'll be analyzing those in significantly more detail in the days to come. For now, we're going to go back to prying to pretend last night -- and much of the last nine months against the Rays, for that matter -- never happened.

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I Am Speechless. I Am Without Speech.

Raise your hand if you predicted that last night.


If there's one thing we've learned, it's to never, EVER again count out the Sox (AP)

If the Red Sox do end up winning this series, in my opinion, that could surpass the 2004 ALCS comeback. Not in terms of historical significance, but in the difficulty of the task. Let’s face it, this Sox team was D-E-A-D until the bottom of the seventh. They couldn’t hit. They couldn’t pitch. I guess you could say they could field – they haven’t made an error yet in the series – but that doesn’t do you a whole lot of good without the first two.

And then, as Terry Francona said, the place became unglued. Quite possibly the most unforgettable from this team in a while. And there are plenty who deserve credit. Start with the seventh, with Crisp and Pedroia providing key, two-out hits to keep the inning alive for David Ortiz. Then you have Jonathan Papelbon – yeah, he allowed his inherited runners to score, but a dominant eighth helped temper the Rays’ red-hot lineup. You have J.D. Drew’s bomb in the eighth, and then Coco Crisp’s unbelievable at-bat to bring home Mark Kotsay. Although WMYM was screaming at the TV for Crisp to stop swinging at ball 4, the guy came through.

Follow that with Masterson’s shaky ninth that was absolved with the double play, and then you come to Drew again, who shall never be referred to as Nancy again.

That wasn’t all. You have Joe Maddon, who made somewhat of a head-scratching decision to allow Grant Balfour to pitch to Ortiz in the seventh when Trever Miller probably would have been the better option, given that Balfour was getting hammered and Miller would give you the lefty-lefty matchup. And then there was  Evan Longoria making an awful throw, coupled with Carlos Pena’s attempt at a hero’s scoop, to keep the inning alive.

So Maddon’s decision to pitch Kazmir proved to be brilliant and yet it doesn’t even matter now. Still, the momentum the Sox have now is only as good as the next day’s starter. So memo to Josh Beckett: Don’t suck.

And if the Sox do still lose this series? Somehow I think that last night’s miracle will do a lot to dull the pain.

What Has to Happen Tonight, For Survival's Sake

What do the Sawx have to do to stay alive tonight? It's not hard to figure out:

1) Have Daisuke Matsuzaka throw an efficient outing: Another game like Game 1 on Friday would set Boston up for a nice, conservative win. Matsuzaka can be infuriating for his voluminous walks, but he has a knack for working out of the jams he creates. Now would be a very ideal time to tap into the competitiveness Theo Epstein and co. cited when paying out the nose for the right to sign him in November 2006.

2) For God's sake hit someone!: Scott Kazmir would be a good place for the Red Sox to beginhitting again, and there's no time like the present. Sure, Kazmir is the Rays' ace, but he's been hittable by Boston's bats in his last two outings against the Red Sox, both in the regular season and in Game 2. Both of those matchups were in Florida, and Kazmir has fared pretty well at Fenway in his career (4-4, 3.02 ERA in 11 starts). Boston needs to get to Kazmir and get to him early, scoring off him before the Rays have a chance to summon their terrific bullpen.

3) Relieve pressure early: The last two games at Fenway have sounded like a tomb, with fans staring at Rays routs in silence. If Boston can jump to an early lead, they can remind their fans that this whole comeback thing is old hat with them.

4) Give the Rays something to think about: Staying alive for another day will force the series to back to Florida, and then the Red Sox could tap into the mystique forged by the 2004 and 2007 Sox squads before them. That, needless to say, would be a huge benefit.

Can Boston pull off all four of those goals? Maybe, but things will have to be a lot different than they have been recently if the Sox are going to stay alive. Otherwise the long, cold offseason starts tonight. And with the Patriots where they're at right now, that's not a pretty place to be.

What Now? Are the Sox Done?

As The Washington Post's Dave Sheining -- among others -- pointed out this morning, losing to the Rays in dramatic fashion Monday afternoon put the Red Sox in a bit of a pickle. To put it mildly.

Lester's loss not only sends shockwaves through the plans Boston may have had for the rest of the series, it also completely undermined the team's bullpen, with Paul Byrd forced into 3+ innings of relief, making him unavailable for the game Boston really needed him in, backing up the ever inconsistent Tim Wakefield. Sure, Wakefield could throw a vintage game where his knuckleball really moves, keeping the Tampa Bay hitters off track and saving the Red Sox. Or he could get battered in the third inning, forcing an early change and the complete exhaustion of the rest of the bullpen.

That scenario is clearly the scariest of all the ones postulated by Sheinin:

If Wakefield gets knocked out in the third inning -- always a possibility given the ephemeral nature of the knuckleball -- who can the Red Sox turn to, since their long guy (Byrd) can't pitch? You're probably looking at three innings of Mike Timlin and/or Javier Lopez.

That's right Boston fans: Three innings of Mike Timlin and/or Javier Lopez. If that sounds terrifying to you, that's because it is.

Look, the series isn't over yet, but a loss tonight would just about do it. The Sox can't expect three straight wins from Daisuke Matsuzaka (sometimes incredible, always unsettling to both teams), Josh Beckett (don't even try to tell us the oblique isn't a factor) and Jon Lester, whose aura of invincibility was completely shattered at Fenway yesterday. It's just not going to happen. That means the absolute "must win" game has shifted from Game 3 yesterday to Game 4, tonight.

You'd have to think the Rays know that, and will be looking to step on Boston throats tonight. If they don't, some are already thinking about both teams' dilemmas down the runout of the series. And that could be interesting.

Why No Paul Byrd, Tito?

There's a post worth reading that has a bit of WMYM on it over at The Washington Post's Baseball Insider Blog, and it gets to the heart of the second incredibly questionable decision by Terry Francona in the first two games (for the record, the first questionable call was leaving Daisuke Matsuzaka in the game to start the eighth inning of Game 1).


It gets into a lot of depth but here's the gist: Why start the bottom of the 11th with Mike Timlin when you could use a perfectly ready Paul Byrd?

Byrd is on the Red Sox roster for a reason. He's a crafty and clever pitcher, and while his guile can't get him out of every jam, it was good enough for him to rack up a 4-2 record with Boston since the Red Sox added him for the stretch run. Needless to say, plenty of his eight starts came against top notch competition (though, interestingly, none came against the Rays).

But wait, there's more. Another potential Byrd advantage is that the Rays haven't seen him this season at all! When Byrd was still pitching for the Indians, he missed the teams only two series against Tampa Bay early in the season. For some pitchers that might not be an advantage, but for Byrd it probably is. The 6-foot-1 righty uses a bizarre, double windup that has a tendency to throw off hitters, and might be just the kind of weapon to unnerve the Rays hitters.

Add to that Byrd's stats in his three most recent trip to the postseason -- last year's ALDS and ALCS -- where he was 2-0 while allowing a total of four runs over 14 innings against the Yankees and Red Sox, and one has to wonder why Francona decided against throwing him instead of Timlin.

As you can read, the post goes on to question whether Francona is saving Byrd for a surprise Game 6 start, given Josh Beckett's recent woes. For the record, I don't think that's the case, and I imagine Andy doesn't think that's the case, either (though he can speak for himself).

Still, it makes one wonder why Byrd is on the roster if not to pitch in that exact situation. Mike Timlin finished the regular season as the team's mop-up man, strictly playing in extra innings and blowouts. That seemed to be the role he was targeted for in this series, too, until he was summoned in the 11th last night. 

So what can Tito be thinking? Is he really considering giving Byrd a start in Game 6 and also trying to save his arm in case he has to be used some in Game 4, which will be started by the ever-terrifying dual persona of Tim Wakefield? It's possible, but given Francona's predilection to stick with "his guys", it seems unlikely.

Really, the whole issue is a head-scratcher, and that's what makes it so strange. Francona rarely makes decisions that beg for second guessing. Maybe he'll be right about this one in the long run, too, but it has us awful curious at the moment.

Not as Bad as it Seems ... We Hope

Sure, it was a punch to the gut. The Red Sox should have won Game 2. They should have won it more than once over. Still, losing 2-1 to Tampa Bay isn't the end of the world.

In fact, given the home form of both teams in this series against the other, winning one of the first two games in Tampa Bay was a huge factor. If you'd told Boston fans before the series that the Sox would win one of Games 1 and 2, it would be hard to argue that the Sox weren't right on track.

At the end of the day -- a particularly long and painful, at that -- that's exactly where Boston is: on track. The problem is that the track is a much more narrow and precarious one than they would have been on after a 2-0 series lead. Now the Sox have no room for error, and that's a dangerous position with a knuckleball pitcher taking the mound in Game 4 in chilly and occasionally drizzly Fenway Park.

Jon Lester's Game 3 start is now a must win. Tim Wakefield's Game 4 will have even more pressure sitting on it, and the Rays will certainly have their eyes trained on a win there, particularly if they can get another Andy Sonnanstine start like they got in Game 4 in Chicago.

More important to the series' complexion, however, was Josh Beckett's utter inability to compete in clutch situations. Boston got Beckett three leads, he lost all of them. Hideki Okajima, Justin Masterson and Jonathan Papelbon were all impeccable -- not to mention Manny Delcarmen, who got clutch outs again -- but those outings would have been preserving a win if Beckett had done his job.

Clearly, Beckett isn't the same pitcher everyone saw in the regular season, let alone in the 2007 postseason. Instead of three aces, the Red Sox suddenly have two and a huge question mark, and Terry Francona has to decide what to do with the rotation going forward.

Despite all of those problems, the Sox really are still on track, if barely. Now, if they can augment Dustin Pedroia's offensive awakening with more steady contributions from Kevin Youkilis and Jason Bay and anything from the uber-slumping David Ortiz and Jacoby Ellsbury, the Sox could really be in business.

Will that happen? Time will tell. For the moment, the Sox have to think about an incredibly disappointing Game 2 for another 24 hours, hoping that the next time they get a lead, their starting pitcher will hold it.

Judgment Calls: Handicapping the ALCS

We're up against the gun here at WMYM, so we're going to make things easy: Here's my ALCS series breakdown in terms of pitching, hitting and, finally, a flat out prediction. Here's hoping it's more accurate than Andy's stab at the ALDS.


PITCHING:

Boston: Matsuzaka-Beckett-Lester-Wakefield-Matsuzaka-Beckett-Lester
Tampa Bay: Shields-Kazmir-Garza-Sonnanstine-Sheilds-Kazmir-Garza

It's hard to make a convincing argument that Tampa Bay has a rotation advantage, particularly with the recent form of Boston's burgeoning ace left hander Jon Lester. With Lester potentially getting the ball in both Games 3 and 7, Boston would seem to have him right in the clutch that he's been excelling at. Josh Beckett had his shakiest postseason outing ever in Boston's ALDS loss, but an extra day of rest -- as opposed to two starts in three weeks -- should have him a lot closer to being on point in this series. Daisuke Matsuzaka continue to be an enigma, wriggling out of jams throughout high pitch counts over just five innings. We still haven't seen him go deep in a postseason game. Could this be the series? And as for Wakefield ... he's Tim Wakefield. While WMYM has a shrine dedicated to him, he's utterly hit or miss at the best of times. He has, however, traditionally been dominant at the Trop, but he'll have to ply his pitches at chilly Fenway in Game 4 of this series.

As for the Rays, Shields has had rough outings against the Sox, Kazmir got drilled the last time Boston faced him in the Trop while Garza continues to seem like the scariest guy they throw out on the hill. Andy Sonnanstine was great closing out the White Sox. Great. Stay tuned. That Game 4 could look like a mismatch in the Rays' favor depending on how the series turns before it.

The bullpen, however, is another story. The Rays have a plethora of setup men without the closer they took and injury-riddled shot on in the offseason: Troy Percival. That hasn't slowed them, and it probably won't now, either. The Sox relievers looked much better in the ALDS than they did in much of the season, but there are still questions. Justin Masterson had one of his shakiest outings as a big leaguer to set the stage for Jed Lowrie's heroic walk-off. Then there's the fact that Mike Timlin earned the extra roster spot. We're longtime backers of Captain Camo, but he was almost a walking white surrender flag during the second half of this year. If he has to come in during clutch situations, watch out. The Rays teed off on him the last time he came in against Tampa. Of course, they did that against Jonathan Papelbon once, too, so you never know.

EDGE: Red Sox. The rotation should help make up for Tampa's bullpen buffer.

HITTING:

Boston: Ellsbury-Pedroia-Ortiz-Youkilis-Drew-Bay-Kotsay-Lowrie-Varitek
Tampa Bay: Iwamura-Upton-Pena-Longoria-Crawford-Floyd-Navarro-Gross-Bartlett

On paper, this is another mismatch. Unfortunately, that's paper that was drawn up over the bulk of the regular season, not a series of clutch matchups between the Red Sox and Rays and the two teams' subsequent ALDS wins. Jacoby Ellsbury seems to be waking up at just the right time for Boston, and if Ortiz can do more than he did in a miserable series against the Angels and if J.D. Drew can stay healthy, the Sox look plenty dangerous. If either of those factors don't come through ... or even don't come through the way Boston needs them to, the Jason Bay will have to be called on to hit at the blistering pace he put up against Anaheim.

Tampa Bay, on the other hand, bats a bunch of guys who many would need scorecards for. That's before you look at monstrous hot streaks for B.J. Upton and Evan Longoria, two hitters sandwiched by Boston area-native and crushing power hitter Carlos Pena. The 'los does strike out plenty, but Longoria has to be considered one of the most terrifying up and coming hitters in the majors. Navarro is another whose contributions can't be minimized. The catcher had a bushel of huge hits against Boston this year, including the ball that cost Jonathan Papelbon in the game that forever turned the AL East tide.

EDGE: Push

PREDICTION: They say great pitching wins championships, and both these teams have the potential to have it. Sure, Tampa Bay's rotation is as young as the rest of its roster, but it's got plenty of heat and talent. That being said, betting against Josh Beckett (despite his ALDS numbers) and what seems like the ghost of Sandy Koufax embodied by Jon Lester is a hard thing to do. That's before you add in hopes for Matsuzaka and the fact that the Red Sox's two most important hitters -- Big Papi and Dustin Pedroia -- almost tossed out in 0-fer in the ALDS, and couldn't possibly be any worse. If Ortiz and Pedroia hit while Beckett improves and Lester keeps cruising, the Sox should win. It says here that will happen.

RED SOX IN SIX

Being Wrong Never Felt So Right

So as Cameron has all too joyfully pointed out, that pre-series prediction was a big swing and a miss. Then again, despite what John Lackey and Torii Hunter want you to believe, this was not an upset, and quite frankly I feel ridiculous making that prediction.

Consider the following:

1.    The Red Sox were 1st in the majors in OBP. The Angels were 18th.
2.    The Red Sox were 3rd in the majors in slugging percentage. Again, the Angels were 18th.
3.    The Red Sox were 1st in the American League in run differential (+151), by a wide margin. The Angels were sixth in the AL.
4.    The pitching numbers were, more or less a wash (LAA: 3.99 ERA, 1.32 WHIP vs. Boston’s 4.01 ERA, 1.33 WHIP). The Sox pitching staff does walk a hell of a lot more batters than the Angels do, but that’s negated by the fact, as brilliant blogger Joe Posnanski pointed out, that the Angels are not the type of team to work the count, and that seriously inhibited their offensive production.

So in conclusion, my predictions are utterly worthless.

As for Monday night’s game, the crowd was electric for the whole night, standing and hollering for every two-out, two-strike delivery. When Hunter delivered the game-tying single in the 8th, it was like a balloon being pricked with a thumbtack. And it pretty much stayed that way, at least near where I was, until the failed suicide squeeze, when it immediately returned to its previous level.

And truly, there is nothing like being in the park for a walk-off, series-clinching win.

I do feel that Cameron was a bit hard on Masterson – he pitched in every game of the series, going at least one inning in all of those appearances (although I don’t think there was any reason for him to come out to start the ninth, if you’re planning on going to Delcarmen anyways). Still, I still believe young Justin will be just fine going forth into Tampa.

Celebrating the Eulogy of a Talented Team

Monday night's ALDS-clinching victory over the Angels was a particularly sweet one, even if it did come with a full Immodium bottle's worth of discomfort for our friends over at The Halo is Lit, as you can read about in exquisitely painful detail here.

Still, it was a sweet one for the Red Sox because it affirmed that they would win by sticking to their program, running out their young guns in key situations and winning and losing with them. Of course, had things turned out differently with the sketchy Varitek tag in the top of the 9th, this could well be a prelude to an epitaph of a Boston kind.

Instead, Jed Lowrie's game-winning single provided yet another reprieve for Terry Francona, whose golden touch kept it's postseason gild, this time in thanks to an excellent bailout performance from Manny Delcarmen and the patient bats of both Jason Bay and Jed Lowrie.

That being said, the Anaheim comeback against Justin Masterson in the eighth was more than just troubling. Masterson entered in relief of Jon Lester, whose 22 innings of scoreless postseason work is the longest streak for a Red Sox pitcher since Babe Ruth. Yes, Babe Ruth. Lester has been incomparably amazing through two postseason games, and he was more than happy to trot back out to the hill, 109 pitches into his outing or not.

Instead, Masterson struggled, putting the runners Hideki Okajima allowed on via walks into scoring position when he missed Varitek's sign and crossed him up with a four-seam fastball instead of a slider, then delivering a payoff pitch to the wheelhouse of the one Angels hitter that did damage to Boston throughout the series, Torrii Hunter.

Was it a bad outing? Surely. Was it the kind of bad outing that Masterson can learn from? Sure, and that's clearly the bright side Francona was hoping to ram home for the young reliever. Masterson has shown improvement from outing to outing since first shipping off to the bullpen way back when Clay Buchholz returned to the rotation. There's no reason to believe he won't internalize his nightmarish eighth inning, write it off as his one bad frame of the postseason and go out against a team he's faced plenty with renewed confidence.

At least he better, for the Red Sox' sake. If he doesn't, the Sox will have a serious problem. Okajima has alternated between lights out performances and full on scuffles, and Masterson has yet to truly bridge into a multiple innings shutout man in the postseason. Just as the bullpen was thoroughly worked through in the ALDS, there will be plenty of work against the Rays, who are sure to keep games close deep. After all, they won more one-run games than anyone else in baseball.

For that, there's still four more days of introspective analysis. For now, it's comforting to think back on another year and another exit for the Angels at the hands of a team named "Sox".

What About That Prediction Now?

Here's thanking Andy for being oh-so beautifully wrong, as he's all too happy to admit.