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?