I get up this morning, check the score, and the first word that came to mind was, Shellacked! When the pitching gives up 10 runs it's hard to complain about the hitting as 10 runs is a huge number to overcome. But after looking at the boxscore I saw that we had the same amount of hits as the Ms, eleven. Now I'm really glad I went to bed, this game was a flashback to 2000, when all we could do is get baserunners and no big hits.

We are now officially playing sub-500 ball. Going into this game we were 2-3 in our last five, but I don't consider that playing sub-500 ball because a win yesterday would have put us at 3-3 over six. So basically we've been hovering at 500 for the last week or so. But with last night we are now 2-4 over our last six. Not good. Not at all.

The trail doesn't get any easier either with three games in Oakland starting tonight. The A's have been pretty bad thus far this year, but they are recently showing signs of waking up (just our luck). We need big performances from Tomo Ohka and Paxton Crawford the next two days and then finish up the series with Pedro.

I did say going 3-3 on this trip would be acceptable, so all is not lost, yet. If we are to take two of three in Oakland the bats are going to have to do some waking up. We've seen the effects of Carl and Manny not hitting, they are a combined 1-16 the last two games. Which goes to show that the rest of the line-up is doing very little to produce runs (sounds like another flashback to me).

Ohka vs Gil Heredia (and his 9.24 ERA) tonight. Since it's Friday I plan on seeing this whole game, but if the Sox decide their going to let Heredia turn around his season starting with them...

Well, let's not think about that...

paul@redsox2000.com