I'll Have My Tea With Three Lumps, Please

So I know it’s been my longest lapse in posting this season, and it has happened to come in the middle of Boston’s first real losing skid on the year. No, I’m not losing my willingness or vigor to post about my team. I’ve been swamped at work with my hours approaching 60 hours each week. I haven’t been able to watch much baseball, which really sucks when I paid $160 to watch as much baseball as humanly possible. I know I’m about to complain a bit about my team, and bitching about Boston’s current situation is like a guy with a bucket of KFC under his arm complaining about being hungry, but I’m going to anyway. Why? Glad you asked…

It’s because Boston has lost three in a row, five out of their last six and are 5-5 in their last 10. Folks, it pains me to say it too. I guess this is where having a double digit lead in your division comes in handy. Each game has been a little frustrating all around. The starting pitching is looking shaky, the bullpen, which looked indestructible in the first two months, is looking more human, and the lineup isn’t bringing in any runs. Last night was particularly troubling with the Sox leaving two or three guys stranded on base in what seemed like every damn inning. I about threw my TV out of my window.

Look, I realize that most teams take their lumps on the west coast on the road. AL East teams historically suffer when they travel to LA or Oakland, even Seattle. After this four game series Boston has to play a weekend series against surprisingly hot Arizona. National League teams have a bad history against the Sox since the dawn of interleague play and I’m hoping that trend continues, because the Sox need a pick-me-up in the worst way. Getting complacent about your large lead isn’t the way to play in June and head in to the All-Star Break in about a month. It’s way too early for that.

I sort of like what Francona has done with the lineup, placing the red hot Dustin Pedroia behind leadoff man Julio Lugo. The equally effective Kevin Youkillis batting behind clean up Manny Ramirez is also an interesting way to stimulate the bottom half of the lineup. So far, however, it hasn’t really panned out. Hence my lukewarm reaction. It doesn’t matter if you get hitters on base when your big bats aren’t producing shit. I just keep going back to the old adage of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” something Francona should maybe keep in mind a few hours before each game.

Because of injuries and illness the rotation is all jacked up as well. I liked Dice-K pitching right behind Josh Beckett and it worked out pretty damn well for the both of them during the first two months. When Beckett went out on the DL for 2 weeks or so, it cause a lot more upheaval than most people saw. Sure they still won, but when you disrupt rhythm on a team, especially in baseball, it takes awhile to correct it. Even injecting Beckett back in to the ‘ro sort of fucked things up a bit. Call me crazy, but the prospect of plugging Julian Tavarez between Beckett and Dice-K doesn’t exactly give you the best one-two punch after Schilling.

It’s hard to question a guy [Francona] who’s made a lot of right moves over the past few seasons, but I’m going to be disappointed if their lead in the East gets slashed in half (or more) because of poor management rather than the Sox just coming back down to Earth, which was bound to happen sooner or later. In my opinion, the Sox are too good and deep of a team to not pull out of this minor hiccup and go back to their winning ways. Fingers crossed of course. Maybe I can go back to wearing my Sox hat I wore from 2000 until they won the Series in ’04? Then again, because of "Reversing The Curse" I'm supposed to be over that stuff.