Byrd Plucked By 5 Run Royal First...KC Royals 5 Boston Red Sox 1

This one was never close, not after Paul Byrd gave the KC Royals five runs in the very first inning and with Zack Geinke, a legitimate AL Cy Young Award candidate, on the mound. Greinke is now 4-0 with a 0.63 ERA over his last four starts and Tuesday night in Kansas City, we could all see why. Here's Jason Varitek's assessment of the young phenom...

“Greinke’s got four pitches, he changes the tilt of his fastball - two-seamer, four-seamer - he had good life to his four seamer today,” said Sox catcher Jason Varitek. “He actually threw a lot more changeups than he probably had, or we had seen or knew of, and he has a devastating slider.”

The Red Sox, who lost the game by a score of 5-1, only managed to collect two base hits. You just can't win a game with two safeties. Paul Byrd was uncharacteristically wild in that deflating and devasting first inning and his team just could not recover. It's as simple as that. Byrd did settle down nicely and pitched into the seventh inning but it was too little, too late. He said this after the game...

“I thought I had great stuff tonight, I just overthrew it a little bit in the first inning. I just couldn’t get the outs. Against Greinke, you don’t want to be down 5-0, it just deflates the team. I’m real frustrated with myself. I’m glad I came back and threw some innings and helped the bullpen out but that’s not my job. I’m here to get on the mound and give our team a chance to win, and tonight I didn’t do that.”

The Red Sox manager, Terry Francona, chimed in...

“So much of his game is not walking people,” Sox manager Terry Francona said. “That’s part of the reason why we got into trouble. We created some baserunners and got into trouble. But after that he was really good, better than we’ve seen in any of his starts.”

So what could have been a three win out of four game series for Boston has been anything but. The only good thing to come out of last night's MLB action was that the Texas Rangers lost again, keeping the AL wild card lead for Boston steady at seven games. It'll be nice to win a game starting tonight, with Beckett more than ready to face the 7-10 Hochevar. GO SOX, I said reluctantly positively. Why relunctantly positively? Simple...it's way too early in the morning on this more than warm Hump Day Wednesday. Where's that cold front when you need it?

You can click on the title of this post for more Sox news from SI and as always, BE WELL. I'll read and respond to every one of your soon-to-come (maybe?) comments, too. Thanks for stopping in as September is getting ready to turn into October and the first full day of Autumn is upon us. See ya.