Sorry about leaving the site high and dry for three days, but I'm still looking for some help when I'm not available (mainly weekends). This is still a one-man operation since my co-partner left the site after last season.

I was there to witness yet another lackluster offensive show from the Sox last night. Manny went 0-4 again, but since he carried us the whole first two months we can't even start to get on his case unless he goes 0 for the next month. The rest of the line-up needs to pick up the slack when this kind of thing happens. But then again when has this line-up ever pulled its weight?

David Cone: This experiment needs to end. Cone is terrible, not even a shell of his former self. I won't say 'I told you so' because I wasn't sure which Cone we would get last night after his decent start in NY last week. He couldn't find the plate and when you get 90 pitches to work with and throw them all by the third, you're all done. I'd rather Crawford or Ohka in there walking the ball park, at least they'd be learning for the future, instead of Cone trying to regain glory that's way since past.

Pete Schourek: Pretty bad when your lefty specialist is actually worse against lefties than righties.

Mike Lansing: Our hottest hitter? Sad. He still doesn't belong on the roster.

John Valentin: He's still been better than Grebeck at the plate, and he is my favorite, but I'm only giving him another week, then it's time to get on his case.

Carl Everett: Seems to be coming out of his funk a bit. Even his outs last night were loud.

Bad decision making by Jimy: There was a glaring mistake I thought Jimy made last night. Dante Bichette was 2-3 on the night and was slated to leadoff the 8th inning. But Jimy opted to put in Nixon in as a defensive replacement in right and move Lewis over to left (taking Bichette out of the game). He still did this knowing that Trot would be leading off the next inning against the lefty Pettitte or the fresh lefty Stanton. Why? I though Trot didn't play against lefties, and especially in a crucial situation. Defense? I said it last week, if you can't score, who cares? Instead of Bichette possibly continuing a good night we get Trot flailing like a fish out of water getting the big whiff.

There looks to be no end in sight folks, we can't hit. Period. Pedro goes tomorrow, and you know what, who cares. Since we re not going to score for him anyway, I'm not even confident that we'll win for the best pitcher on the planet.

Site Note: The weekly stats section will be updated ASAP, but it may actually take a weeks hiatus as I have a few busy days coming up. We'll see.

paul@redsox2000.com