Daisuke & Wakes & Birdies...Not A Good Combination For The Boston Red Sox

Daisuke Matsuzaka of the Boston Red Sox held the Baltimore Orioles to just one hit for the first four innings but then it all exploded on him. The Birdies scored 10 (!!) runs in the fifth and sixth innings and all was lost. Tim Wakefield, who came in from the bullpen, contributed to the massacre, just as I thought he might. You see, I feel very strongly, as may of you do, that Wakes is a starter and is ineffectual as a reliever. My worst fears were realized. Here are a trio of Boston players with their short comments, all with similar sentiments. Matsuzaka is first...

"I felt OK," Matsuzaka said. "I think I got a little too greedy, even in this first start. It was an unfortunate waste."

A waste is damn right! Daisuke, you might have felt OK but it's important to the team that you can be able to pitch more than four quality innings. My goodness! Here's the next pitcher, Tim Wakefield, who went 2.1 innings and gave up (gulp) five hits and five runs. And this to the worst team in baseball who now are guaranteed to win their first season series of 2010 at our expense...

"I wasn't very good today," Wakefield said. "I had an opportunity to keep us in the game the way our offense was going. I just didn't do it."

On a bright note, Big Papi David Ortiz seems to be coming around at the plate. He clubbed two taters and generally had a fine offensive night. Heeere's Papi...

"We're not playing that well," Ortiz said. "We have some games that we should have won, but things happened. We've got to play better, I guess. All of us. We have to develop a better mentality."

He sounds like Pedey Pedroia and with good reason to. This Boston club has played nowhere near our expectations
and way below their talent level. To put it bluntly, they're hard to watch right now. Maybe Josh Beckett can salvage one game out of three. I would shudder to think of an Oriole sweep. Nah, no way. We'll all find out starting at 1:35pm EDT from Camden Yards in Maryland.

You can click on this post's title for more on the Red Sox courtesy of SI dot com and as always, BE WELL. Have a great Sunday. Thanks for stopping in. Things can only get better. They cannot get any worse. See ya.