Friday, August 11, 2006
Ugh. Did that really happen? Were we really just forced to watch the Red Sox get swept by the Royals?
And did it have to happen with Runny Elves on the mound? I hate Runny Elves. Hate him. This of course is why, and when he nearly took Lowell's head off last night, all sorts of memories came flooding back. You really should go read that linked story; not only is it a glorious moment in baseball history, it explains my feelings for Runny Elves quite thoroughly.
Alas for our lack of a Kyle Farnsworth on the team to act as an enforcer. In fact, with Tek and Trot out, I don't know who would have done the beating if beating had been required. I guess Gabe Kapler... he did beat up Sturtze last brawl out. Maybe Wily Mo; he's certainly large enough, but I don't believe we have enough information about his level of potential crazy.
Ugh. Ugh. I just feel dirty about this whole thing. The Royals? A sweep? I didn't post about this last night because I stayed up to watch the Yankee game and then went straight to bed, hoping in some dank, irrational pit of my mind that it was all a bad dream and when I woke up it would have never happened. Then I woke up this morning late afternoon and found that it wasn't. Ugh.
Dougie went deep, and Wily Mo had one of those blasts that was so massive it cleared the fountains, but the Royals... I dunno. Stuff went down. I don't really want to look at the box score for this game, because it's just going to upset me, but I do definitely remember Reggie Sanders playing really well, despite the fact that he's 87 years old and I keep thinking he's a Cardinal. And I feel like Teahen did stuff. Probably.
I know, OK, I know that this year was supposed to be the "rebuilding" year. Oh man, I know. That's the whole point of Theo coming back; he wanted it to be that way and wasn't willing to go out, rookies in hand, and sell the future to win this year. Which is cool. It's a rational way of running a ballclub and something that Boston hasn't really done much of in the past.
We were still playing really well despite that, though, that's the hard part to get over. Kids were stepping up much earlier than we though they'd be able to. David Wells hasn't been here much, Matt Clement* is dead, Coco and Wily Mo both spent time hurt, Keith Foulke still hasn't been right yet this year. But people stepped up. Who would've thought Lester had it in him ('tho he's definitely still a work in progress; his high pitch counts, if nothing else, tell you that) or that Papelbon would continue to be quite this good?
Where we're screwed now, of course, is 'Tek. He's not the kind of player you can replace on a team. When the pitchers went down, we had young pitchers in the minors who were in line to play anyways. Maybe ideally not for another year or two, but they were there, and when pressed into duty they did pretty well. We don't have that for a catcher. I'm not very well-up on the situation for other clubs, so I guess it's probably the same most anywhere you look (except for the Braves... jeez, they have McCann and Saltalamacchia, that is so unfair), but the fact is that when Varitek got hurt there wasn't anything we could bring up that was comparable to what we'd done with the pitchers.
Mirabelli is not an everyday catcher. He just isn't. He's better than some backups, but he's certainly not better than, say, Vance Wilson (and that's not a phrase I thought I'd ever have occasion to write). Javy Lopez hasn't caught basically all year, of course he's going to be rusty as the dickens, and he hasn't worked with this pitching staff at all. Corky Miller is a 30 year old career minor leaguer who would bounce up to the majors with the Reds for like 15 games a year between 2001 and 2004, which tells you pretty much all you need to know about him (except that his real name is Abraham).
The other injuries we've been able to bounce back from. Losing Jason Varitek is looking more and more like the kind of thing we either don't bounce back from at all, or we do bounce back from, but not for a while and by the time of the bounce-back we've dug ourselves into such a deep hole in the division, and the Central is so strong, that we're out of the playoffs and that's that.
Ugh. Ugh, ugh, ugh. Now I'm just depressing myself. The point was that even though this was always supposed to be a rebuilding year, the fact that we had been doing so well makes a slump like this sting all the more.
We need to beat up the Orioles. Because after the Orioles are the Tigers and, um. Erm. Well. If the Red Sox decide to lose to the Tigers, that, um, might be kind of OK.
I know you're all going to yell at me for that but, look. This is a rebuilding year for the Sox, awful as it now seems. The Tigers have been building and rebuilding for ages, it's kind of now or never with them. So. Shut up.
*I was wearing my "Self defense is not a crime" tshirt yesterday, which prompted my brother to say he didn't get it, despite the fact that he must have seen me wear it 100 times before yesterday. Eh, whatever. I told him it was from the rally, which was for clemency.
Brother: Matt Clemency?
Me: No, no one gives a shit about him.
So there you have it.Labels: baseball, loss, MLB, Red Sox, Royals, Runelvys Hernandez, sweep
4:24 PM
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