Red Sox, White Sox

Back to baseball. Since my last post - Good Sox, Bad Sox - the last seven Sox games have been against teams with black and white uniforms, and they've gone a disappointing 4-3 during this important homestand. The Yankees series last weekend was a mind bender - the Sox scored more runs in both the fist two games than the Patriots mustered against a pathetic Bengals team last week. Ugh. The ChiSox are a pretty mediocre team, but it's never easy to sweep a 4 game set, especially for a Sox team that's still trying to center itself for the last quarter of the season.

Anyhow, yet again, you just never know which team will show up. The lineup from the 14-1 game on Saturday is by far the best they've fielded 1-9 all season, and if that lineup is clicking, I still think they're the best team in MLB. That's a big IF, of course, and the Yankees hitters last Friday were just so INSANELY good - nobody can match that kind of production. On the other hand, that same lineup was held to 1 run the next day by an Tazawa, a no-name pitcher, so go figure.

And the same Tazawa gets bombed last night, giving up 9 runs before you even knew the game had started. Go figure again. Gee, maybe Nick Green should have started instead of finished - he was actually pitched pretty well all things considered. Not only that, but even after spotting the White Sox to a 9-0 lead, the Red Sox had several chances to chip away and get back into the game. All those solo homers went to waste, but with the confidence from winning the first three, and the walkoff Ortiz HR the night before, it looked do-able. If the game went another 2 innings, they probably could have evened things up. Again, go figure.

Anyhow, between Good Sox, Bad Sox and Red Sox, White Sox, these posts are starting to sound like Dr. Seuss. The way the Rockies are playing right now, I can just see the next post being something like Our Sox, Your Rox, and then we'll be back to 2007 again. A very unlikely rematch, but October is pretty far off right now.

Back to the present. Actually, a small detour to last Friday. There are three things I've come to dread about my teams - 2 for the Sox and 1 for the Bruins. For the Sox, it's Friday night games and extra innings. Last Friday was the 20-11 blowout, which actually exposed the Yankees as much as it did the Red Sox. Sure, there was the perfect storm of their hitters being on fire and terrible pitching, but we did score 11 runs. We also left the bases loaded in the 7th and 8th innings, at which time the score was 16-9, or something like that. A couple of big hits in those innings, and that could have been a winnable game. The Yankees have their flaws, and they're not going to score 20 runs every night.

However, it was a Friday night game. So was the 10-9 game the Sox won in Toronto the previous Friday night - and that was one of the weirdest games I've seen in a long time. It was a laugher early on, but somehow, the Jays kept coming back, again and again. Something about Friday night games with these guys that is worrisome. And - oh! - it's Friday, and we're playing the Jays again tonight. Should be interesting...

Quickly - the other two things I dread. For the Sox, it's also extra innings games. On paper, they're 4-6 this year, but it seems much worse than that. They have had some crushing OT losses, esp to the Rays and Yankees, most notably the 13 inning game with Tampa and the epic 2-0 game in NY that went 15. The moral of the story - we need more clutch hits in the late innings and walkoff wins - I don't like our chances when the game goes past 9 innnings.

Finally, I don't know why, but I've noticed a pattern with the Bruins the past few years. Whenever they have a Saturday matinee (usually when double-booked with the Celtics), it's almost a guaranteed loss. These games almost always are against dreary teams like Ottawa, Chicago or the Islanders, and for some reason the Bruins never score more than 1 or 2 goals, and the outcome is almost always the same - losing 2-1, 4-2, etc. It doesn't keep me up at night, but it sure is hard to figure out.

Enough sports. I've got more important things to figure out today, so back to work.