Tokyo Split

Now that the "season opener" series between Boston and Oakland is officially split, it's time for the teams to return to their homeland and try to return to the normal rigors of a baseball season. Thankfully, they will have the weekend to recoup from their jet lag and resume the second half of their series come April 1st when the baseball world will be spinning for real.

The Sox were pretty much pounded from the word go this morning. When your team doesn't put up much of a fight at 5:30AM it sort of sucks to be up that early, as I mentioned yesterday. Yesterday's buffoon for the A's turned out to be today's hero. Former Royal fuck up (not royal fuck up, but certainly not far off) Emil Brown blasted a three run homer off Boston starter Jon Lester in the bottom of the third to extend their lead from 1-to-0 to 4-to-0. DH Mike Sweeny went 2-for-4 and scored a run in "former Kansas City Royal Day" at the Tokyo Dome.

David Ortiz is 0-for-6 so far, and while this is probably not cause for panic, it is a little concerning he was unable to get his bat on the ball at least once the past two days. Manny gave the Sox their only run of the game in the 6th inning on a solo shot with two outs. Mike Lowell had another solid day at the plate as well, going 2-for-4 with a couple of singles in the 4th and 9th inning. Unfortunately, the lack of offensive effort beyond this was not enough to hang with the A's. Doesn't look like it matters what continent it's on, the Sox usually suck against the AL West on the road. At least we're getting it out of the way right away this season.

With all the downtime between now and next Tuesday Dice-K and Joe Blanton will return to the hill to face each other for the second time in a week. No word on who will be facing Rich Harden the day after. Josh Beckett perhaps? I'm not sure why, but I've got a worse feeling about the start of this season that I did last year. Even though the team is basically in tact from their World Series run in '07, something just seemed a little off these past two days. For now, my rational side will chalk it up to being on a trip most of them did not want to take.

Just really quick here, back in Fort Myers Bartolo Colon missed his assignment yesterday because of a toothache. I'm not kidding. Can we please just cut him already?

One Down, 161 To Go

With the first game of the 2008 season officially in the books, all I can say is that I can’t wait until the games are on at night here in the States. Being up at 5AM is officially too early in the morning if I haven’t already been up all night. However, I’m still alive, at work and happy that the Sox grabbed their first win of the year. It wasn’t easy.

Dice-K was roughed up immediately by the A’s in his return to Japan. He looked like he usually does, five or six innings of solid pitching with one inning that looks like he belongs in Double A. Mark Ellis got things started for the Athletics in bottom of the first with a shot to left center. Things quickly descended from there and I wondered why in the hell I got up after only about five hours of sleep. Matsuzaka proceeded to walk hitters, hit batters and throw wild pitches. At the end of the disaster that was the first inning, the Sox were lucky to get out alive only down 0-2.

The bats didn’t have any problems getting on base this morning, but they did have issues driving them in once they were on. The Sox were able to manage five hits before they did some damage to the scoreboard in the top of the sixth. After grounding into a fielder’s choice and grounding to first, Brandon Moss showed up and became a major contributor to the game doubling to right and scoring Manny Ramirez in the sixth and then homering in the top of the ninth to bring the Sox back to a tie with the A’s after entering the inning down 3-to-4 and pushing the game to extra innings.. Moss was a last minute addition after JD Drew was scratched for back problems. Hopefully a little Sake and massage with happy ending can get him back on the right track. I keep waiting for Drew’s injury bug to show up.

Ortiz went hitless and was intentionally walked in the 10^th but still looked better and more comfortable at the dish than he did most of the year at the plate last season. However, I did like how he evolved and adjusted last season after being unable to hit for power because of his knees and hit for average almost better than he ever had in his career. Manny came up big to get things started in the sixth with a two run double and did the same in the 10^th to seal the deal for the Sox. As long as one of the “Big Two” is coming up clutch, I don’t care which one, I’ll be a happy camper this early in the morning.

The one glaring concern was the amount of pitching the Sox had to throw at the A’s to walk away with a 6-4 win. Five pitchers in all were used over the course of the game after Dice-K left the game after the fifth. Kyle Snyder, Javier Lopez, Bryan Corey, Hideki Okajima and Jonathan Papelbon all saw action in the last half of the contest. None of them looked especially sharp except for the two middle relievers (Lopez and Corey) and Okajima. Papelbon looked nearly horrid and practically gave the game away in the bottom of the tenth. And thanks for some shitty baserunning by former Kansas City Royal Emil Brown, who is a gigantic dunce cap, the Sox got the second out where Brown should have hit an RBI double with only one out. With two out and nobody on, Papelbon put two more runners on base before getting Kurt Suzuki to ground out to first.

Overall both teams about what was expected of them. The A’s took shots here and there to build a small lead at different points in the game, and the Sox battled their way back into it with some power hitting blended with some clutch pitching when it was needed. Yes, even after I spend the last paragraph blasting (sort of) the staff. Hopefully tomorrow produces another victory in less stressful fashion for me when I’m up at 5AM. Again.

Game of the Rising Sun

Tomorrow starts the 2008 season for the Boston Red Sox against the Oakland A's in Tokyo, Japan. The game is on at 5:05AM on ESPN2 and yes, I will be watching before I head into work. Dice-K will get the nod tomorrow morning squaring off against Joe Blanton. Hopefully he feels nice and comfortable on his home turf to secure a win for the Sox. Jon Lester will get the start on Wednesday morning wrapping up the first two games of the series against the A's before heading back to the West Coast of the U.S of A. to play the final two games of the series in Oakland. After that, it's straight into the meat grinder on the road in Toronto and then the head back to Boston to open the home schedule against highly touted Detroit and the rival New York Yankees. Yikes.

Boston To Boycott?

And the MLB still sucks. (But the picture I'm including in this post is pretty cool. I hope she's at least 18.) At least their brass that decided it would be a good idea to reneg on the $40,000 pay day bonus that was originally promised to coaches and staff members of the team does. The players have all voted unanimously that they will not get on the plane to Japan to play their opener against the Oakland A's if the MLB doesn't hold up their end of the bargain on these payouts to the staff.

This may initially appear to be a bunch of greedy, overpaid baseball players intentionally sitting out because something isn't going their way, but if you have half a brain you'd realize they are sticking their necks out for a group of people that aren't protected by one of the most powerful sports unions in history. The MLB pretty much promised them everything under the rising sun to get them to go over their to open the season. Why would you want to anyway? I'm pretty sure I'd be more worried about starting my season off the right way rather than spreading the goodwill of baseball all over the world at the expense of my well-being. Maybe I'm just a self-centered asshole.

The fact will be that no matter what baseball decides as an organization, the Sox will be on a plane to start their season on March 25th. Maybe if the players are really sore about it they could pay the stipend that the MLB is backing out of themselves. I'm sure they could afford it. I highly doubt this happens though. The problem with me is that this is no way to start off a season while looking to repeat last year's success. Curt Schilling is out for at least half of the year, Beckett is having issues getting out of training, Ortiz is coming back from knee surgery, Crisp vs. Ellsbury in center (although I don't really see this as a problem), Bartolo Colon and generally mediocre play so far. Questions in the starting rotation don't help a whole lot either.

The big problem here with this situation is that Bud Selig is a giant dickhead with ears. Always has been, probably always will be. The guy owned and ran the Brewers for Christ sake. What did you expect? Anyway, $40k for the hard workers in the Sox organization in the grand scheme of things for this little venture are peanuts compared to what they (Major League Baseball) are probably making off of it. This could split the team a bit, since it was not a unanimous decision to go to play in Japan in the first place, or it could bring the team together even more in the face of King Bud. The only thing that can happen now is to get the season underway and see where the chips will fall on the season. If everything comes together the Sox have the potential to at least win the division. If the situation splinters and these problems are compounded by more problems, I wouldn't bet against a collapse like in 2006.

Springtime Catch-Up

Wow, I know it’s been awhile since I’ve posted on here but work has been a bitch lately and time is a commodity I don’t enjoy too much at the moment. I’m not even going to try to get caught up on everything that has happened so far (avoiding the scout in the hotel with his dick out for some underager that probably had Chris Hanson secretly watching in the bushes).

The biggest news out of spring camp is the fact that of Josh Beckett’s health. No, not his gut popping out in that picture either. For now the Sox are using extreme caution with another of their aces out for at least half the season in Curt Schilling. Beckett will not be making the flight to Japan to take on the Oakland A’s and the starting nod was given to Daisuke Matsuzaka today. It’s actually nice to see Dice-K get the opener in his native land in some sense. I’m sure he’ll get one heck of a polite reception.

The Beckett situation isn’t probably as bad as most would think, he’s already throwing without pain and could be getting back into a game by this weekend. Pitching Coach John Farrell said the projected dates for him are to get into the bullpen on Thursday and hopefully some game time by Saturday or Sunday.

Hey this just in! Bartolo Colon sucks! Surprised? I know I’m not. I know the Sox were fairly desperate and the move to acquire him may have been a knee-jerk reaction to losing Schil’ for most of ’08, but good God, is this the best they could come up with? Today’s goal for Colon was to make it through the third inning against the Yankees. Well, he didn’t even make it out of the first folks. I know it’s only spring training, but if this were to happen any time during the regular season it could be one of those mini-disasters that Sox fans would have a hard time getting over. The good news is that Bart isn’t letting the loss get him down, not one iota.

Colon said that all he wants is to stay healthy, God willing. After the game he said he felt “great.” Well, if getting a healthy ass kicking to the tune of 41 pitches (41!!) in 2/3rds of an inning gave up three hits and four earned while walking three and striking out two. Francona has said since camp started that Colon has a great attitude and arm strength, but it’s probably the only two good things he could come up with. Control is going to be a major factor in his possible return to the bigs, hopefully things don’t get so desperate that we have to take a flyer on him at any point in the season. If he’s ready and good to go, then fine, give him a shot. I don’t think I’ll be excited about it at any point though. When the Sox are in Japan, Colon will be pitching a minor league game. He’ll also be available for the exhibition series against Dodgers at the end of the month. Something to note here also, if he’s not on the 25 man roster by May 1^st he has a clause in his contract to where he can bow out.