Friday! .... Friday! ... Friday! ...
*OK, that headline was supposed to read like those Battle of the Monster Trucks! commercials. You know "Sunday! (fading) Sunday ... Sunday ... at the Bayside Expo Center! .. Expo Center ... Expo Center ..." Anyway ...
*If the Red Sox do miss the playoffs this year, well, I generally tend to hate second guessing, but that's exactly what I'm going to do here.
I think the Sox are missing simple intangibles this year. You know, the stuff the stats geeks overlook when they decide that Edgar Renteria's OPS is better than Orlando Cabrera's. Can you put a number on Cabrera's enthusiasm? Did the numbers accurately reflect that even though Cabrera had a lower batting average, it seemed like every hit of his in the late innings last year was clutch? And that doesn't begin to broach Cabrera's superiority in the field.
Maybe I'll sound like some sort of canterkerous coot here, but the Sox have been lacking things like Pedro Martinez sticking a fastball up near Hideki Matsui's ear at the precise moment they need to regain their swagger. You can look at Matt Clement's numbers with the Cubs last year and say that his numbers were better than his record, but he was still 9-11 and recently he's been pitching that way. David Wells, you know what you're getting when you cast your lot with him. There's good Wells and bad Wells, and you just hope you get good Wells when you need it.
You'll notice I'm not blaming injuries here. Have they had them? Yes. But nowhere near as bad as the Yankees were afflicted. If anything, among all the little things you could add up when trying to figure out why the Sox don't have that dozen-game lead people were expecting, you have to question the whole notion of basically letting Curt Schilling and Keith Foulke essentially do their rehab in major league games.
And what is it with the Sox constantly getting croaked by rookie pitchers they're facing for the first time? Does this team have any advance scouting?
Either way, it is all speculative at this point, although I think everyone is half-expecting the Baltimore Orioles that just rolled over and played dead for the Yankees to suddenly wake up and remember how to play this weekend. My guess is that the Sox and Yanks both end up in the playoffs -- the Chicago White Sox seem bent on going into a death spiral of historic proportions, and it isn't too hard to see them slipping out of contention entirely.
*Speaking of the White Sox, yes, they are on the verge of a collapse that would place them right up there with the 1978 Red Sox and the 1964 Phillies, but we have a real live one in manager Ozzie Guillen. The guy is never afraid to speak his mind on anything -- he openly all but questioned Damaso Marte's manhood publicly -- and he also makes his email address available to the public -- ozzieguillen13@hotmail.com. In this day of focus groups, PR spin, and sod from the ballpark for sale, guys like this need to be cherished.
*Thanks as always for checking out the site. You may have noticed there have been fewer long pieces from me over the past few weeks and more emphasis on material contributed by others. This should be a temporary thing, I've been in a real busy period with the day job. Things should ease up once the baseball regular season ends. In the interim, I'm sincerely flattered that the regular material has found an audience -- Dispatches from Iraq tends to get 15,000-20,000 page views each time out, and both Chile's Corner and Football Thursday pull in about 3,000 a pop. This weekend, expect something on wrestling tomorrow and reader feedback on Sunday (and if you feel like you want to vent about anything, drop me a line and we'll get you in). Thanks again, and allow me to make my occasional pitch: If you like what you read, please pass the link to the site on to a friend or two.
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