Please Look After Your Health

One of the most frustrating losses of the year. Losing 2-1 to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, the Red Sox beat themselves in dropping the final game of the three games series at Tropicana Field Wednesday night. The Sox left 14 men on base, had men on base every inning and left men on base every inning. While Dice-K Matsuzaka had another good outing (final line: 6 innings, 2 hits, 2 earned runs, 4 walks and 8 strikeouts), the big blow against him being a two run jack by B.J. Upton in the bottom of the 6th, the Red Sox offense did not do anything to help the cause. Although they won the series, the Sox will await the outcome of the Yankees game against the Angels on the west coast Wednesday night to find out if they go into their four set against the Chicago White Sox 5 or 6 games up in the AL East.

The Red Sox had a big scare in the top of the 3rd when Dustin Pedroia was hit on the left elbow by a tailing fastball thrown by D-Rays hurler Edwin Jackson. Watching the game on Tampa’s FSN, which is THE channel to watch if one is interested in fishing promos—they are so into fishing in Tampa they even interview people in the stands about upcoming fishing events during the game—you could hear the pitch crush into Pedroia's elbow with a loud crack. Pedroia stayed in the game long enough to score the Red Sox lone run but was obviously in pain on the base paths. He was replaced in the bottom of the 3rd by Alex Cora. Pedroia was taken for precautionary x-rays—which proved negative. He returned to the Red Sox bench in uniform later in the game. While he is day to day, an injury that sends Pedroia to the DL for any length of time would be potentially devastating to the Red Sox. He leads the team in batting average and has proven himself as a consistent hitter in the leadoff spot. (In essence of full disclosure, Pedroia going to the DL would also be potentially devastating to me as I own Pedroia in a mixed-league head to head fairly deep Fantasy Baseball League).

At the risk of jinxing this team, the Red Sox have been very lucky during the 2007 campaign in avoiding the injuries that have plagued other teams this year throughout both the American and National League and which also plagued the Red Sox in 2006. Although David Ortiz has been hampered throughout the year with various ailments (knee and shoulder especially), and most likely will require surgery in the off-season, Curt Schilling spent 7 weeks on the DL and Josh Beckett missed two starts because of an occlusion on a finger on his pitching hand. Additionally, Mike Timlin started the season on the DL and Brendon Donnelly went onto the DL in June and has had season ending reconstructive surgery. Only this past weekend, Dave Mirabelli was placed on the 15 day DL with a strained calf. That said, the Red Sox have been spared having a starting position player spend time on the DL. As Red Sox Nation will remember, when Schilling sat he was replaced in the rotation by Kason Gabbard who was 3-0 with Schills on the shelf. Julian Tavarez and Time Wakefield also stepped up nicely in a re-jigging of the rotation to fill Beckett's starts when he was healing. All in all, after 127 games, the Sox have been relatively healthy this year.

Curt Schilling probably said it best in an interview early on in the season when he stated that the team whose starting rotation on opening day pitched the most innings during the season would be the team who would go the farthest. He should have probably also said that the team whose starting position players spend the least amount of time on the DL during the course of the season would also be a the team that is favored to win it all.

Lineup !! -- Single File

Opening a three game set against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim today, Tito Francona used what seems to have been his 50th different batting lineup permutation. This is no small feat given that the Red Sox have only played 101 games thus far this year. In this Boston version of "who's up first," the Red Sox finally had rookie of the year candidate Dustin Pedroia leading-off followed by Kevin Youkilis, Big Papi and Manny Ramirez. Pedroia, who by the way has the second highest batting average on the team (Papi is 1st) and the team's third highest on base percentage (Papi and Youkilis are one and two respectively), has hit leadoff only sparingly this year and has usually been relegated to the 2nd spot in the order. The number one spot has seen at various times: Julio "Look Ma, I'm batting over .220 Now" Lugo, Coco Crisp and a somewhat ill-conceived experiment involving J.D. Drew. While Papi and Manny are regulars in the 3rd and 4th slots, Youkilis has been moved around from 2nd to 5th to 4th and anywhere else where there has been an opening in the batting order (notwithstanding that the past two years have clearly shown that Youkilis hits much better out of the number two slot and this is where he should reside for the remainder of the year). The 5th slot is usually J.D. Drew's but, with his continuing ineffectiveness, Tito should wise up and put Mike Lowell in the 5th spot (at least for now). The 5th spot is a spot where Lowell can more easily drive in runs by hitting the doubles for which he is rightly becoming renowned for. The Captain, Jason Varitek, fits nicely in the 6th or 7th spot (J.D. Drew would go into one of these spots as well) leaving Coco Crisp and Lugo for the 8th and 9th places. If anything has remained constant this year about Lugo and Crisp, it is that when these two guys get on base at the same time, they usually create chaos for the other team. Let's just hope that when Tito goes out to home plate tonight to exchange lineup cards before the second game against the Angels, the lineup he used in the opening set will be the lineup he uses again today and each day going forward.