An Off Day to Reflect
Here we are in an off-day. Is there any good TV on on Thursday night’s by the way? I always feel lost clicking through the other stations when the Sox aren’t on.
But anyway, let’s take a realistic look at the Red Sox current situation. Just becuase they Yankees have been playing out of their minds in the last month, doesn’t mean the Red Sox are any better or worse. In fact, they still have the best record in baseball with both the most wins and highest winning percentage (72 and .600). Yes, at one point they had a .700 winning percentage, but did anyone really expect that to keep up? That’s a pace for 113 wins - which just ain’t gonna happen.
They are 5-5 in their last 10, which is disturbing, but 2 of those losses were blown by Eric Gagne, which is a trend that isn’t going to continue. Yesterday, they suffered from “pitcher we haven’t seen much of” syndrome, and beat up on the Tampa bullpen scoring 5 runs in 3 innings. Unfortunately, 5 wasn’t enough with Daisuke and his rare poor start.
But look on the bright side - the Angels are playing in Toronto tonight and then have to make it to Boston tomorrow to play 2 games. This means that their pitching staff has to come up with at least 27 innings pitched in a 28 hour or so period. Plus, the Angels are historically bad at Fenway Park! Yes, they have the second best record, but for some reason, I’m just not worried about the Angels. They are a scrappy team that always wins the close ones - essentially the opposite of the way the Sox play the game. Do I dare say I think the Sox can easily take 3 out of 4?
And with the Yankees playing Detroit and then flying to the west coast, we have every reason to believe that the 4 game lead of a couple days ago is the closest they are going to get.
So have faith Sox fans - this is a year of parity in baseball. Everyone is beating everyone they shouldn’t and teams are lucky to be over .500 in most cases. There are currently 15 teams that within 5 games of making it to one of the 8 playoff slots. And guess who has the biggest lead on any of them? That’s right, the Red Sox.
Stumble it!