Going into the game last night Frank Castillo needed to come up big in terms of the numbers of innings he went, and he came thru with flying colors going seven strong and allowing only two earned runs (6 overall). But his defense let him down big time in the fifth when the Tigers scored five (4 unearned).

Even with all the unearned runs we still had our chances, we out hit Detroit 12 to 10 and only got 3 runs for the trouble. It's like I said a few weeks ago when we were really going bad, this team will show flashes of brilliance at the plate only to revert back to pitiful form. Counting Wednesday's marathon we've scored 7 runs over the last 27 innings. Bad!

As expected the Sox did make a roster move before last night's game by recalling Paxton Crawford so we could have a fresh arm in the pen. The casualty of the move, as always, was whipping boy Lou Merloni, only this time he was placed on the 15-Day DL instead of heading to Pawtucket. I can only imagine the 'made-up' injury they reported for this one.

Immediately after the game Crawford was optioned back to Pawtucket and it's expected that the Sox will add another player to the roster before game time today. Most likely it will be Chris Stynes activated from the DL.

Tim Wakefield will head to the hill tonight and will also need to come up big with some innings. The pen still needs another day before they can all be considered refreshed, so we'll look for seven out of our knuckleballer tonight. Anyone else realize that with a couple more innings pitched (to qualify), Tim Wakefield has the 2nd best ERA in baseball?

Ah the nature of the knuckler...

paul@redsox2000.com