Red Sox Baseball..With Poor Pitching You Get Egg Roll, Not A Win..Detroit Tigers 8 Boston Red Sox 3 & Tampa Bay 7 Boston 3

For the Boston Red Sox and every other MLB team in the land, some days are better than others. That was true for Boston starters Clay Buchholz and Timmy Wakefield yesterday in separate Florida games. The Red Sox lost to the Detroit Tigers by a score of 8-3 in the day game and followed that with a 7-3 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays in the nightcap. Timmy Wakefield took the brunt of that one, giving up 6 runs (!) in three innings. He started the game with some downright scary knuckleballs, a few of which were thrown to eventual home run hitter Evan Longoria. Here's Longo...

“I mean, really, all I could do was laugh. He threw me three of the best ones I had seen from him. The one that I hit was probably a pretty good pitch, too. It’s one of those at-bats where my approach is just swing hard because you can’t have an approach against a pitch like that.”

I've seen hitters baffled by some of Wakefield's pitches and I understand what Evan means. I mean, imagine standing at the plate, bat ready to explode. Wakefield, from a full windup, unleashes a 68 MPH floating hummingbird of a pitch that finds plenty of the strike zone. Hittable? NO WAY!! But last night Wakes couldn't keep it up and some of his pitches didn't have the movement that the earlier ones did. Hence, home runs.

The day game came down to Clay Buchholz having a bad day with his command. Pinpoint control is a huge part of his pitching success. That's true for just about every pitcher. But last night he had squat. Clay speaks...

“I struggled with command with every pitch. I could never get comfortable on the mound. Definitely not one of my best outings. You learn from it. Still spring. Have a couple more outings and I’ll go from there.”

Both Clay and Timmy and the other three rotation pitchers know they each have two more starts to fine tune their skills before these games turn real. Yes, that time is coming and coming quickly. I can't wait.

Don't forget to click on this post's title for more on the Red Sox, including Extra Bases' wrap of the two Boston losses and an entertaining and informative feature about the Red Sox third basemen from 1967 to present day. After title clicking, just click on that Red Sox feature which is located in the center of your screen. Have fun. Wade Boggs will ALWAYS be my favorite Boston hot corner guy of all time with Mikey Lowell a close second. Boggsie had the longevity with his batting average and his always improving defensive skills.

As always, BE WELL. Have a wonderfully terrific weekend. Who knows? Here in north central Connecticut it might approach 70 degrees F. yet again. Bring it on.