Theo..Six Plus Defense Equals Well Rounded..UCONN Women Go For 60 Straight Double Digit Victories

The Boston Red Sox GM, Theo Epstein, spoke to the Boston Herald's Michael Silverman recently about his club's starting pitching. He stressed that the fact the Red Sox have six starters ready to toe the mound will not be a problem. He also mentioned Boston's vastly improved defense. Here's a quote from Epstein...

“I’ve been around teams that had deep starting pitching on paper and by the time you get to the season, you can’t find a starting pitcher to take the ball,” Epstein said. “I don’t see that as a problem. I see that as a potential asset. It’s not worth wasting time thinking about it or talking about it unless or until you get to a point during the regular season when you have more than five guys who are healthy and can do a good job starting. We’re not at that point right now. In our club’s case, what we feel good about is how well-rounded we are,” the GM said. “A lot’s been made about moving in a different direction with our defense. That’s not really what we did. We just made an attempt to become well-rounded and be good in all areas of the game.”

Now THAT makes sense. In my book, and I'm talking from experience, a club can never have too many starting pitchers. If Beckett, Lester, Lackey, Buchholz, Matsuzaka and Wakefield all remain healthy throughout the entire regular and post season, Timmy will probably pitch once every couple of weeks. That depends on the off days built into the Red Sox schedule. Tito Francona, the manager, would not want to stretch any starter's off days by more than one so Wakes will be on a very flexible schedule. Who knows? In case of a game where the regularly scheduled starter gets bombed out after a couple innings, we'll probably see Timmy warming up early in the bullpen. Of course, we hope that will not happen. The Red Sox would be behind in that case. So six equals five plus one...in a way.

Speaking of this post's title, simply click on it to be zapped to the Boston Globe Red Sox homepage to catch up on all the Sox news. February starts on Monday and the Sox news will pick up dramatically. You can bet your bippy on that. As always, BE WELL and have a terrific weekend. Oh, the University of Connecticut national champion women's basketball team, the Huskies, will go for their 60th (!!) consecutive double digit victory today at 2pm EST. They play Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh. Look for them to win by thirty plus. There's no national television but if you're in Connecticut look for them on CPTV or listen to them on WTIC AM 1080. The video feed might be available on the UCONN Huskies website. GOOGLE IT. And the beat goes on, the beat goes on. See ya.