Red Sox Over Angels As Schilling Scoreless Streak Continues

Curt Schilling was brilliant for eight innings Saturday afternoon as the Boston Red Sox defeated the California LA Angels 8-0. He has a scoreless streak of 14 innings going, and he is truly pitching like our ace. I hope the front office can lock him up for next year before the All Star break, for he has become a wily experienced pitcher rather than the flamethrower he used to be. And he is better because of it. He had hopes of a complete game shutout until a laborious 7th inning. From the Courant.....

"No longer the workhorse he used to be, Schilling, 40, was content to play the role of the old warhorse on this overcast day. He was happy to play the hero, getting a standing ovation from the sellout crowd of 36,300 as he walked off the mound in the eighth.
"If we had an extra day [of rest] I would have loved to have gone back out there," Schilling said. "But a 5-0 game becomes an 8-0 game and it ends up probably being the best decision for everybody involved. And really, at the end of the day, going back out for the ninth would have been me trying to get a shutout, as opposed to me trying to make 33 or 34 starts and being as healthy as I can."

And said Tito of his pitcher.....

"He threw strikes, he stayed out of the middle, and he really stayed out of a certain area or a pattern the whole day," manager Terry Francona said. "Changed locations, changed speeds, changed pitches on all the hitters right from the beginning, and didn't give anybody the same look or fall into a pattern. Did a great job with that."


Peter here. High praise from manager Francona. And this is huge...Sox starters have pitched at least seven innings in each of the last five games, going 4-1 with a 1.50 ERA. Curt and Josh are a big part of that stunning stat. Schill's pitch selection and the quality of each and every throw was a delight to every Red Sox fan anywhere--sitting in the stands or watching NESN at home. Economical is the word that comes to mind. Economical AND effective. Our Curt Schilling. He and Beckett make quite a one-two punch. And the way Daisuke and Wakes have been pitching, I'd say right now the Sox have the best one-two-three-four punch in all of baseball. Rotation-wise. They've won four of five games, and the lone loss featured a great Daisuke pitching performance which was overshadowed by the one hit outing by the Mariner's Felix Hernandez.

The batting stars? Big Papi. Big Papi. Big Papi. Big Papi. That's one for each of his 4 RBI, 3 of which came on a monster shot. Eric Hinske had a pair of hits and played first base.

So the club looks good. The hitting is there. The pitching is there. The bullpen, thank goodness for Paps, is there. And the Boston Red Sox are in first place. The rains have started here in the greater Hartford area at 7am, marching north and east towards Boston. There will not be baseball today, and with the early start tomorrow and the copious amount of rain expected over the next 24 hours, tomorrow's Patriot's Day game is in doubt, too. But I like where we are. I like it a lot.
I linked Amalie Benjamin's article from the Sunday Boston Globe. It's a good one. Click on the title, and enjoy your Sunday, grey and wet and cool here in north central Connecticut, RSN, USA.