April 7th Red Sox

Everything that could go wrong went wrong for the Sox yesterday. I hate to bring it up because every Sox fan is trying to gorget it, but it is in the back of everyones mind. The Sox 0-6 start last season and eventual 2-10 start is still possible for this years Sox. They needed a win yesterday and no one did their job, no one. The Sox were held scoreless by a combination of five Tiger’s pitchers. No Justin Verlander, no Jose Valverde. The Sox managed just one extra base-hit and struck out eleven times. You aren’t going to win any game in which you don’t score a single run.

On the other side of that you also typically aren’t going to win any games in which you allow ten runs. Blame it is thumb if you want, but if it is really what caused him to give up five home runs in four and two-thirds innings then he should be on the DL tomorrow. I said it yesterday and unfortunately I was right, the long ball is Beckett’s down fall and that is what did him in. Even though the Red Sox were down 7-0 after he left the rest of the Sox had a job to do. They needed to put up a few runs against the Tigers scrubs in the bullpen for confidence. But instead it was the Sox bullpen that gave the Tigers even more confidence than they needed. It was a great time for some of those guys to show their stuff, but instead Bowden was really the only guy that looked somewhat decent. 

Now the Sox are left with one game in the series to manage their first win of the season. Clay Buchholz with try and stop the bleeding for the Sox, but he is going to need some run support. The Sox, who scored the most runs in all of baseball last year, have managed just two in the first two games. It seems to me like every year the Sox hitting starts slow and I don’t get why. They need someone to get them going. They need Ellsbury to start off the game with a single and then steal second or they need A-gon or Big Papi to go deep early. Someone needs to take the pressure off the other guys. Most importantly I think, they need to jump out to an early lead. So many times the Red Sox start down in the game. Not only is that tough on the hitters, but it is tough on the pitcher because they feel like they don’t have any margin for error. Last year it always seemed like the Sox would be down 2-0 going into the third and in another game the Yankees would have a 3-0 lead after the first. It doesn’t really matter how, but the Sox need to avoid yet another 0-3 start to the season.