Lester finally being Lester: Red Sox trounce Jays
Dustin Pedroia is congratulated by David Ortiz after clubbing a three-run homer that put his Red Sox in front and backed a stellar outing by Jon Lester. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press,Darren Calabrese)
Prior to their series finale against the Toronto Blue Jays, Boston Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia voiced his frustration with the lack of offense by a usually powerful lineup, saying “we’ve got to find a way to score runs…we need to start doing some things, offensively.”
Pedroia backed up his comments, and the rest of the lineup answered the call. If that wasn’t enough, the Red Sox actually received a good outing on the mound from Jon Lester.
Kevin Youkilis put Boston on the board in the top of the first inning with a solo-home-run off Toronto’s young starting pitcher Ricky Romero. When the Jays came to the plate in the bottom of the frame, I expected Lester to lose the one-run lead awarded to him by the first baseman.
On cue, he did. A 15-game winner a year ago, Lester has been notorious for losing leads this season. When he does, he usually opens the flood gates by giving up so many runs that a comeback by his offense is inconceivable. The lefthander allowed a single to leadoff hitter Marco Scutaro, then, after striking out Aaron Hill, walked Alex Rios. This has been a reoccurring theme for Lester, as he has walked 24 batters this season, and is on pace to pass last year’s total of 66 in 33 starts. Each free pass handed out by Lester this season, it seems, has either prolonged or started a big inning by the opposition. The Blue Jays, determined to continue his woes, pulled off a double-steal. Lester had been in the middle of this jam far too often this season, but this time, he escaped with minimal damage. a sacrifice fly by Vernon Wells tied the score. Surprisingly, this was the only run Lester allowed.
Instead of serving up hit after hit, which I had become accustomed to, he tallied strikeouts galore. This is not his forte, as he usually relies on meekly hit groundballs and weakly hit fly-balls to succeed. Yet, though an abnormality, it was extraordinary to watch him not only dominate, but do so by baffling the Blue Jays to the tune of a career-high twelve strikeouts.
Eight of his strikeouts came after Pedroia crushed his second home-run of the season, a three-run shot, down the left-field line. Five of the final six outs Lester recorded were via the strikeout, including all three in the fifth inning, and the final two in the sixth. His fastball that usually sits in the 92-94 miles-per-hour range had more life, topping out at 97-miles-per-hour with good movement in an effective location as late in the outing as the 109th pitch thrown, which retired Adam Lind for his eleventh strikeout. His outing was finished once a looping curveball, a pitch that complimented his blistering fastball nicely, evaded the bat of Scott Rolen.
The Red Sox offense made sure it would result in a win, the fourth of the season for the 25-year old. Manager Terry Francona took Pedroia’s demands to heart, moving the reigning American League Most Valuable Player into the leadoff spot. Jacoby Ellsbury, who usually anchors that position, was moved to eighth.
Usually, a demotion in the lineup is due of poor hitting, like the reality check handed out to the slugger who isn’t slugging, David “Big Papi” Ortiz, but in Ellsbury’s case, it’s to give the bottom of the order more stability. The center-fieder has been on fire of late, batting .300 with a hit in 24 of his past 27 games, so he should continue his excellence despite the change in scenery.
Youkilis, Jason Bay, and Mike Lowell, manning their normal positions in the third, fourth, and fifth spots, continued to tote hot bats. Lowell stretched the margin to four with an rbi-double in the fifth inning, after Romero began the frame by walking Youkilis and Bay.
Boston’s offense took two next innings off, then put the exclamation point on a must-needed victory with three runs in the eighth. J.D. Drew, who moved from the seventh spot to the second, plated the first run off reliever Brian Wolfe with a sacrifice fly. Youkilis followed with a rocket that was stung so crisply that it barely cleared the left-field fence. Wolfe, like many before him, tried to sneak a first-pitch fastball by Bay, which has only led to bad things. Bay leveled the offering deep into left for his 15th longball of the season.
Baseball is so much simpler when a team benefits from good pitching and good hitting in the same game. Hopefully, this will start a trend for the Red Sox.
Fools gold.
They still got beat 2 out of 3, to a team that is in a free fall, and they still didn’t face the Blue Jays only quality starting pitcher. They scored 8 runs off of some nobody, it isn’t as if they scored 8 runs off of Halliday.
Yet all the Red Sox fans are dipicting this as some kind of huge victory, and that the ship has been righted.
Let’s see where they are in two weeks, after they play the Yankees and the Phillies.
The fact that ESPN has strangely choosen to ramp up their coverage of Tom Brady and the Patriots should tell you something.
It demonstrates that come July 1 they expect the Red Sox to be nothing but an afterthought, and they will move quicky to full time NFL training camp coverage, without acknowedging the failings of the Red Sox when they fall out of the race.
I depicted this as a huge victory because games like this–good pitching and good hitting–haven’t happened very much for the Red Sox. I know they are still in trouble, especially since they play, as you say, the Yankees and Phillies in the coming weeks.
Everyone at ESPN adores Boston sports, this is blatant. Berthuiame refers to the Red Sox, or anything Boston as “the nation.” They will follow Brady continuously, and start their coverage early if the Red Sox falter.
I felt the need to cover a good start by Lester because, well, this dominance was his first of the season.
You are missing my point.
You say that ESPN will start their Patriots coverage early if the Red Sox falter.
My point is, and obviously you haven’t been checking ESPN.com every day, but they have ALREADY started their Patriots coverage.
The Patriots and Brady have been part of their front page news probably 5 out of the past 7 days, even though there is NOTHING to report.
Witness today’s story, which is basically a non-story, which is basically in summary is that the surgeon that operated on Tom Brady thinks that he did a good job and that the patient is going to be fine.
What you have to understand about ESPN is that while yes, they certainly are in the tank for all teams Boston; they are so much more in the tank for the Red Sox, because of the whole George Mitchell conflict/connection.
Furthermore, you have to understand the way ESPN manages their news cycle. What they do is pick an athlete/team, and pump them up, bigger, and bigger, and bigger, until the hype and can no longer be sustained and or lived up to.
Then, when the only other alternative for ESPN is to acknowledge that they were wrong, that they mislead the fans, that they are a big part of all of what is wrong in sports, ESPN instead bails out of the story, pretends that the whole build up never occurred, and then immediately moves on to the next big story that they have been nurturing in expectation of having it take over all the media oxygen.
A great example of this is the Patriots of 2 years ago.
From before the first day of training camp, ESPN, on TV, the radio, and the internet, and especially over the radio and the internet, endlessly promoted, literally around the clock, the notion that the New England Patriots were not only going to go undefeated, not only that they were the best team in the history of football, but they were the best team in the history of all sports.
The Patriots not only lost the Super Bowl, they lost what is easily the greatest game of the Super Bowl era in what is probably the greatest upset in Super Bowl history, the only other game that could possibly compare is Colts/Jets.
Yet by 12 on Monday, it was treated as the top story in a day of several stories, and by sunrise Tuesday, if you watched ESPN on TV, or listened to them on the radio, or looked at the website, you wouldn’t even know the game occurred, never mind that it was one of the greatest upsets in history and one of the best Super Bowl games ever played.
Think about it, ESPN gave more media to the Patriots every single day that July, before training camp ever started, than they gave to the Giants, literally 36 hours after they won the Super Bowl.
That says allot about ESPN.
Apparently ESPN thought they had a more important story to cover, one that relegated the Super Bowl to an afterthought.
Starting that Tuesday, immediately following the Super Bowl, ESPN immediately changed their top story to Roger Clemens is the antichrist, approximately 2 weeks before his appearance before the Waxman committee.
See, ESPN has changed the way they cover sports now that they are fully integrated with ABC, and they run their newsroom the same way that ABC runs theirs, which is to say that instead of just reporting, they believe they have a duty and obligation to practice activist journalism.
Part of activist journalism is this notion that they can shape public opinion through shaping the news.
Quite simply, the Yankees are the flagship franchise of Major League Baseball, and they always will be, with the Dodgers a close 2nd. In football, it will always be the Cowboys, followed by the Steelers, and even though they have been putrid for the better part of the last decade, the Raiders. Basketball will always be the Lakers and Celtics. Despite Joe Montana and Michael Jordan, the 49ers and Bulls are irrelevant.
However, the Red Sox think they can supplant the Yankees and become the flagship franchise in Major League Baseball, but they never intended to win that title on the field, instead they try to secure it through media manipulation, through their connections to ESPN by way of George Mitchell, and through their connections to the NY Times through part ownership of the Boston Globe.
Just like the Red Sox put out all these false stories that they were going to get Teixeira, when they were never going to do any such thing, they are putting out all these propaganda stories that they are on the same level as the Yankees.
However, none of it was ever true about Teixeira, and none of it is true now.
See, propagandists never admit that they lie to you, instead they just direct your focus elsewhere, just in the same way a magician causes you to focus your attention on one hand, so you never see what the other hand is doing.
Sure, I am a Yankee fan, but I am an objective baseball fan. I know that the Yankees have some flaws. The Red Sox of the past 5 years had some very good teams, but the notion that this year’s Red Sox is a championship contender is simply and grossly overstated.
Like I said, early and often, that this year’s Red Sox are a wild card contender IF AND ONLY IF everything breaks right for them. As expected, just like what happened for the Yankees last year in simmilar circumstances, everything isn’t breaking right for them, and it was my prediction that Boston would be +/- 5 games of .500, and they aren’t far off of that, and in the end they very well may be that.
However, if and when the Red Sox fall out of it, most sports fan of your generation will be too distracted to notice. Instead, over the remainder of the regular season, ESPN will focus your attention on how dominant the Patriots are, with on assorted occasions breaking stories revealing how evil, Roger, Manny, A-Rod, and Scott Boras are.
You really have to watch ESPN like you watch the regular political media, and by that you have to look at them with suspicion. Usually, when they try to force one story down your throat, it is because they want to distract you from something else that they don’t want you to know.
What ESPN doesn’t want you to know, is that while they have been telling you for 6 months that Boston is the best team in the American League, the truth is they got rid of Manny because they didn’t want to pay him, and because they didn’t replace him on the payroll, and because now Papi is finished, the Red Sox need not one but two more hitters, before they can even be considered to be a contender for even a wildcard spot.
Sure they are only a half game back, but it is early and the 162 game schedule always separates the pretenders form the contenders.
Which is why ESPN has already put the Patriots and Brady into heavy rotation in their news cycle, and training camp is still 60 days away.
Clearly, I did miss the point. And clearly, ESPN is obnoxiously biased towards Boston sports. They covered the Celtics exclusively during the first year of the new Big Three, they follow the Patriots around looking for stories, and when they do publish articles, they are blatantly desperate. They turned cartwheels when it came to their knowledge that Brady was back to full health.
Just the fact that ESPN has Bill Simmons and Peter Gammons, two Red Sox fanatics, states their favoritism.
The favoritism is predictable in this country. The Cowboys are covered, like the Red Sox, non-stop, with all the drama that goes on there. In the past, they have been fascinated by the Romo-Owens drama. Though there is something there, they drove the story into the ground. Players on ESPN’s favorite teams cause stirs, which, but even though they are worthy of 30 seconds in Sportscenter, they spend an hour talking about, for instance, the ramifications of a controversial statement T.O. made, and rephrasing the same thing over and over again.
This is why ESPN is so frustrating. When something having to do with their teams, they completely go away from everything else in sports. They’ll talk about how Brady will do next season, and forgo recapping 15 games on baseball’s tap.
The Red Sox finally figured out their offense. They just needed a bit of retooling. Ortiz’s woes are very worrisome because Boston can’t have two .200 hitters in their lineup (though Varitek has been okay, he still falls into this category. The rest of their hitters are playing well, and their pitching is starting to turn a corner, so I wouldn’t consider them a pretender with no chance to make the playoffs. Sure, the Yankees are having a tough time losing, but they aren’t that much better than Boston.
They may have some holes, but this entire year you have been saying “it’s early and they will fold” which, considering how good their offense is, and how their pitching has been of late, there is no way you can come to this conclusion without basing the entire argument on the fact that this is a hope from a fan of the enemy. Sure Ortiz has struggled, and Papelbon has lost velocity, but there is no way that just from that you can say that they aren’t a championship contender. A wild card contender if everything falls their way? Have you seen how abysmal the Rays, AL Central, and East has been? The Rangers should win the West, and the Tigers the central, but because the rest of their divisions foes are paltry, the Wild Card is wide open.
No, the Red Sox got rid of Manny because they’d had enough of his antics. It wasn’t about money; they have money to spend! They don’t need two hitters; they have Bay (he’s adequate, even though you don’t think so). He’s been one of the league’s best hitters…16 homers, 51 rbi’s!!
What you are missing about the Red Sox and ESPN with the Peter Gammons angle is that his primary employment is with the Boston Globe, and the Boston Globe is owned by the New York Times, and the New York Times is a minority partner of the Red Sox. ESPN is run by George Mitchell, and Mitchell is also employed by the Red Sox.
So therefore you have a network run by a guy who works for the Red Sox, who then decides to put forth a reporter, Peter Gammons, and present him to America as the most informed baseball man in the world and a paragon of objectivity, and all of his opinions, as well as those of everyone else on the network, are so grossly slanted towards the Red Sox.
This is an obscene violation of one the most basic tenant of journalism, and is a disgusting conflict of interest.
CNBC, whenever they so much as mention the share price of General Electric, qualifies it with the disclaimer that GE owns NBC.
Every other corporately owned media outlet always errs on the side of full disclosure when any story has a mention of any other connected entity. That is every media outlet other than ESPN.
As for the Red Sox, they have had one streak where they beat up on a very bad Baltimore team, a Twins team with no Joe Mauer, and then swept a Yankee team without A-Rod, who sent out the back end of their rotation compared to the front end of the rotation for the Red Sox, and still the Red Sox had to steal one game, and the home plate umpire hand a second one to them.
Other than that, the Red Sox have been a losing ball club.
After the Phillies and Yankees, their schedule gets very soft for a month, but I still do not see them going on a tear.
The Yankees are surging, and the Red Sox are unraveling.
You say that their offense has been so good, but I go back to my point that I made before opening day, they will beat up on bad pitchers and bad teams, but everyone can do that, but the Red Sox cannot beat up good pitching, not even once in awhile, they just don’t have that capability like they had with Manny and the Papi of days gone by.
If Jason Bay was really as good as you think he is, not only would the Red Sox have signed him, they would have hit him 4th, but they didn’t even hit him 4th when Youklis was out, they put Drew in the cleanup spot.
Tampa played great the first week of the season, but since then they have played horrible, but that is not going to last forever. Still they are only 5 games back of the Red Sox, and you know at some point they are going to put up 8 runs a night for 3 weeks in a row, it is just a matter of when.
Can the Red Sox do that?
No way.
Sure you can point to their starting rotation, and they have a nice rotation, but contrary to what some Red Sox fans think, they certainly are not the 1970 Baltimore Orioles. Thanks to the back end of their rotation they are no better than 2nd best in their own division, and quite possibly third. The front end of their rotation isn’t so great that they are going to have three 20 game winners with ERAs below 3.50, to offset their inability to score runs on a consistent basis.
You and all other Red Sox fans say that they didn’t get rid of Manny over money, but what facts bear this out?
The fact that the Red Sox said so?
Please.
All you have to look at is the fact that the Red Sox swore up and down that they would replace Manny on payroll; allocate the $20 million per year that Manny was getting and spend it elsewhere.
Did they do that?
No.
Instead they simply took the money that went to Coco Crisp, and most of the money they took out of the pocket of Jason Varitek, their captain by the way, and give that money to a bunch of injured older players on 1 year deals, and then took that $20 million that was going to Manny and put it in the bank.
You say that you want to be a sports reporter, and I encourage you in this endeavor. However, they only way to be a sports reporter is to be just a reporter and to do that you have to view everyone and everything critically.
If you were covering your local county government let’s say, and your county executive said he would cut property taxes, and then 3 months later they mail out tax bills to everyone reflecting increases, would you still believe the politician, or would you believe the tax bills?
Two morsels of wisdom for you…
Don’t believe the things people say, believe the things they do.
People may lie about numbers, but numbers never lie about people.
Which leads me to another oldie but goodie, which I am sure that you have heard before…
When they say it’s not about the money, it is always about the money.
Manny and A-Rod are the best pure hitters in the game, and Manny is the superior player compared to A-Rod, because he loved being in the big spot and excelling there, where A-Rod is mentally fragile.
It really doesn’t matter how many times Peter Gammons goes on ESPN and says that getting rid of Manny was a baseball and not an economic decision, or that the Red Sox are a better team without him.
Saying the same lies over, and over, and over, simply doesn’t make the truth any less true.
This is no different than “Baghdad Bob” who was on Iraqi TV telling the people over and over about how they were routing and killing all the American troops up until the moment his television studio was occupied.
Unfortunately, there is not yet any army organized for the purpose of removing Peter Gammons from the set of Baseball Tonight, but one can still hope.
The simple truth is that Manny is a great player, and the Red Sox did not want to pay him, so they got rid of him, but they never wanted to admit so much to their fans. Because the Red Sox got rid of Manny, they are not nearly as good of a club as they were before, and while they may be a contender for a playoff spot, as 2/3 of all teams are in the Wildcard era, they privately understand that they have no shot whatsoever at winning a championship, which is why they are playing Jeff Bailey, and trying to pawn off Brad Penney on Philadelphia.
ESPN will give the final scores, but they will never completely disclose these clearly evident truths. This is fine, because, as I said, what they say will not make the truth any less true. Instead they will just try to obscure it to whatever extent they are able to by diverting public focus to other stories, which in this case will be 6 to 9 months of Tom Brady worship.
Money did have something to with trading Manny. But, the reason they didn’t want to pay him was because of his on-field antics and clear lack of desire to play hard. That’s just my take.
The Red Sox have never liked negotiating in-season with their players. The brass probably wanted to see how Bay would do over an entire season with the team before jumping to conclusions and signing him. I agree with you in this sense: I do find it odd that Bay didn’t hit fourth when Youkilis was out. Clearly he’s a better hitter than Drew, but I guess the Red Sox see him as a 5th or 6th hitter, which is very unusual for a player with his talent.
Why do you think that the Rays will be in it for the long-haul and not the Red Sox? Just curious. In my opinion, I don’t think the Rays are better than the Red Sox; they’re not even close.