Off-Day Musings

While the Red Sox have an off-day today, Your Red Sox Diarist is not so lucky. In keeping with our mission of scribing the Most Popular Red Sox Blog on the Internet....from China, we bring you our regular off-day feature, "Off-Day Musings." In no particular order:

Bobby Kielty, the former Oakland A's 31 year old switch-hitting outfielder, played in his first Triple A games since signing a minor league contract with the Red Sox earlier this week. In a double header against the Yankees' Scanton based Triple A club, Kielty went 0 for 3 with three strikeouts in the first game and 0 for 3 with two strikeouts in the second game. With these numbers Kielty is making Wily Mo Pena look like Ted Williams.

Kielty is a career .295 hitter against lefties--this is important because he is expected to be used predominantly against lefties if called up to The Show. Wily Mo by the way is batting .291 against left-handed pitching this year.

Last night's 9-6 win over the Angels was the first time we really got to see what the bullpen Theo has assembled really looks like. I for one, was very impressed. Okijima, Gagne and Papelbon shutting the door for the 7th, 8th and 9th innings (as well as one out in the 6th inning), was relief pitching at its finest. Kudos also to Julian Tavarez and Mike Timlin. The Red Sox bullpen kept one of the best offense in baseball at bay only allowing 3 hits and one run over 6 innings. Okijima once again demonstrated why he is unquestionably the Red Sox MVP this year.

Our old friend Joel Pineiro, who was designated for assignment by the Red Sox in late July, then, somewhat surprisingly, agreed to be optioned to Pawtucket (which ultimately led to being traded to the St. Louis Cardinals at the non-waiver trading deadline for a player to be named), pitched 7 scoreless innings in his St. Louis debut giving up 4 hits, no runs, no walks and striking out 4 in a 5-0 victory over the San Diego Padres tonight in St. Louis.