M's Scream By Red Sox In AL Standings, Continue 139-Game Win Streak

PROPS TO JACK CUST who got a 95 mph fastball from Bobby Jenks, let it travel deep into the strike zone, and turned on it with sudden-ness.  He socked it hard and far, off the Green Monster.  The blow decided the ballgame.

It was a super-compact swing.  Inside out, 95 off the hands.  He squared it so cleanly you'd have thought he was an LPGA golfer.

An encouraging sign.  

Mike Schmidt had 6 homers in 42 games the year he quit midseason, and over-the-hill players get some nice hits here and there, so let's not declare that one AB matters and that the previous 100 AB's don't matter.

But it was nice to see Cust put a charge into one, and I'll cheerfully take more, if there are any to come.  If Jack Cust were to start hitting, this offense would really take off.  Up to "pesky."

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SLOPS TO BRANDON LEAGUE who looked terrible for two hitters.  For some weird reason, it looked like he'd been out ten days.

He was throwing 94 mph, real wild, falling behind ... the leadoff guy, the SS, hit a ball 400+ feet into that triangle in C/RF and League lucked out.

Third hitter, Drew, League was back, 98 mph and hitting his spots.

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PROPS TO JAMEY WRIGHT who marched out of the bullpen in the 8th with a 5-4 lead in Fenway Park.

Facing?  A-Gone LH, Youk RH and Papi LH!

Wright, coming off two terrific outings, glared in at Adrian Gonzalez and cracked off a 15"/14" change curve Right. Down. the Heart. and was up, 0 balls 1 strike.

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Wright threw five pitches to AGone:  two "show" fastballs well off the zone, and three change curves inside the zone.  One out.  Tom Gordon, eat your heart out.

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Against Kevin Youkilis, tour through pitches 1-6 carefully and notice the way that Wright changed eye levels on him:

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Note also that in 6 pitches, Wright used each of his Mike Marshall pitches twice.  Marshall used to actually roll dice to generate pitch sequences.  In this AB, apparently Wright threw 1d6 six times and got 3,1,4,5,2,6.

By the time he broke off a 2-2 curve on the hands, Youk was well-and-truly hypnotized.

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Against Big Papi, Wright threw a curve for called strike one and then a "same-plane" high fastball to induce a popup.

Gonzalez, Youkilis, Ortiz, Fenway Park, one run lead .... 1-2-3 three up three down.  It's a shame that they give the save to League, isn't it?

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SLOPS TO THE UMPS who outrageously took a strikeout away from Jason Vargas right in front of the top of the Red Sox order, giving the Sox #9 hitter a walk.

The Red Sox went on to score runs 2 and 3 after two (actually three) were out.

I was also maddened by a bogus 3-2 strike call on Justin Smoak -- it was a good 8-12 inches inside.  Smoak legitimately had to lean out of the way; the ump rung him up, with gusto.

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SLOPS TO THE SECOND-GUESSING OVER CLEANUP OLIVO.  As Geoff Baker pointed out, Olivo's LD% had been way over 20% .... so Eric Wedge ignored the non-saber AVG and managed off the saber LD%.

For this, he took flak from sabes, but it was a creative call that kicked off the current offensive avalanche (or, the current offensive mini-mudflow).

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It's one thing to say that Hitter A is better than Hitter B in the long run.  But isn't a manager allowed intuit that Hitter B is better this week?  Is that the point we've reached in sabermetrics, that the players are truly little more than Strat-O cards?

Do we have near-perfect measurements of baseball players?  There are LH/RH splits.  What about the splits for hangovers, the splits for a guy who just got great news about his family, the splits for a guy whose hamstring problem just cleared up?

Eric Wedge put Miguel Olivo in the cleanup spot and pulled his team out of a power dive.  I'd think that was a lot closer to being graded "genius" than being graded "ignorant."

Anyway, this ballclub has gone from 5-12 to 12-15 in a real hurry.  Wedge is doing a grrrrreat job.

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PROPS TO THE LUCK OF THE DRAW.  The Sox' rotation and their ERA+:

• Lester 165
• Beckett 165
• Buchholz 79
• Lackey 67
• Matsuzaka 104

We hit our 1-in-5 mathematical chance and missed both of their hot guys.  If the Sox don't figure out Doogie tomorrow, they're facing Felix Hernandez to avoid the .... sweeeeeep.  

Now these pokeys know how Detroit felt.  You can't stop the Seattle Mariners, you can only hope to contain them.

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PROPS TO STEALING A TOUGH GAME WITH THE BACK OF YOUR ROTATION, which in our case consists of one pitcher.  Now it's back to the aces.  

I like baseball.  It makes me happy.

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Be Afraid,

Dr D