Daily Archives: May 21, 2007

The Red Sox have lost five games in May. Five. That’s it. Five games.

On May 1, they turned a 4-2 ninth-inning lead into a 5-4 ten-inning loss when Jonathan Papelbon blew his first save of the year against the A’s. They lost a 2-1 contest to Johan Santana and the Twins on the fifth (a game started by Julian Tavarez, incidentally). Tavarez lost again to the Orioles in his next start by a 6-3 final. Justin Verlander and the Tigers beat Tim Wakefield 7-2 on the fifteenth. Most recently, the Braves and John Smoltz took advantage of a spot start by rookie Devern Hansack to dropped a 14-0 beating on Boston.

That 2-1 loss to Santana and the Twins remains Boston’s only road loss of the month.

The Red Sox have won 14 games in May. They have the best record in baseball, the biggest division lead in baseball (10.5 games over the O’s and Yankees), their Pythagorean record matches their overall record, they’re winning at home, on the road, against lefties, righties, against the AL, against the NL, against the East, Central, and West, in one-run games, and in blowouts. They have the third-best pitching staff in baseball (behind the pitchers park-assisted Padres and A’s) and the third best offense in baseball (now tied with the Yankees behind the Indians and surging Tigers). Quite simply, they are the best team in baseball, and they’re for real.

Thus far the Red Sox’s only significant injury concern has been a reoccurrence of Josh Beckett’s blister problems that has landed him on the 15-day DL. That might slow the Sox down in the near future (Hansack’s loss on Saturday came in place of Beckett), but it won’t stop them. Lefty Kason Gabbard, who posted a 3.51 ERA in 25 2/3 innings for the Sox last year, started yesterday and handed Tim Hudson just his second loss of the year. He could return to the roster when Beckett’s spot comes due again. Then again, thanks to a scheduled off-day, Beckett will be eligible to return himself when the Red Sox next need a fifth starter, which means the primary impact of his injury could be simply Hansack’s one loss and a couple of extra starts by Julian Tavarez, who otherwise would have been the starter getting skipped.

Incidentally, Gabbard started yesterday because the Sox are going for the jugular in the Bronx. Gabbard’s spot start (he’s already back in triple-A) allowed the Sox to start Tim Wakefield tonight against Chien-Ming Wang in a fantastic matchup of specialty pitchers, each of whom lost their previous outing against tonight’s opponent in April.

The good news for the Yankees is that they have their Big Three starters going in this series (Wang, Mussina, Pettitte), and that Bobby Abreu and Alex Rodriguez showed some signs of life in the final two games at Shea. Abreu collected three hits, including a double, and three walks in those two games and made some hard outs in last night’s contest, while Rodriguez picked up three hits and a walk of his own, two of those hits being home runs.

Oh, and Robinson Cano takes a five-game hitting streak into tonight’s game. This is only Cano’s second full season, but his trend thus far seems to be slow starts. He’s a .249/.272/.360 hitter in May in his young career (he’s hitting a very similar .241/.278/.342 overall this year), but those numbers jump to .350/.383/.541 in June (which is just ten days away). Here’s hoping the trend holds.

The bad news is Mariano Rivera’s continued struggles. Mo worked the ninth last night and gave up a home run to Damian Easley, the third home run he’s allowed this year, two of them coming off the bats of Easley and Marco Scutaro. Mo hasn’t allowed more than three home runs in a season since 2001 and hasn’t allowed more than five in a season since he was a 25-year-old starting pitcher in 1995. Mo has allowed 11 earned runs this year. He hasn’t allowed 20 since 2001 and hasn’t allowed more than 25 since 1995. I’ll be honest. For the first time in a decade, I can’t say I’m comfortable with the idea of handing Mo a one-run lead in the ninth inning, and that’s far more disconcerting than the 10.5 game deficit the Yankees take into this series.

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Saturday saw more misery for the Yanks, who lost starting pitcher Darrell Rasner in the first inning with a broken finger (he’ll be gone for three months), and then the game, 10-7. Robinson Cano had a couple of hits, including a home run, but his three errors overshadowed his offensive contributions.

Fortunately, the Yanks salvaged the Sunday Night game as rookie Tyler Clippard pitched a fine game, and held his own with the stick to boot, as the Yanks won, 6-2. Not a bad way to start your big league career, eh?

Couple of few notes:

Jason Giambi’s candor might just land him in more trouble than his current 1-26 slump.

I know we’ve been over this time and again here for the past three, four seasons, but man, is the Yankees bench weak or what? How many teams in the majors have a less effective bench? Oh, for the days of D. Strawberry.

On a positive note, how much fun has it been to see how well Jorge Posda and Derek Jeter are performing? It’s especially exciting to see Posada mashing like he is. Jeter? Eh, we’re used to this kind of consistency.

In Sunday’s News, Bill Madden notes:

Maybe if it wasn’t for the fact it’s been obscured by the overall mess of this Yankee season so far, there would be more of an appreciation for the quiet, Joe DiMaggio-like hitting job Derek Jeter has been doing game after game. With his seventh-inning RBI single yesterday, Jeter has now hit safely in 37 of 39 games in which he’s had an official plate appearance. While there’s no way he could ever keep up such a pace (which would mean he’d hit safely in 153 games barring injury), if he did manage to maintain this hit-per-game consistency which began about a year ago, Jeter would be in position to equal or break a unique record he shares with four others. According to the Elias Bureau, the record for most games hitting safely in a season is 135, set orginally by Rogers Hornsby in 1922 and later equalled by Chuck Klein in 1930, Wade Boggs in 1985, Jeter in 1999 and Ichiro Suzuki in 2001.

But there’s a lot more to what Jeter is doing that already separates him from those four and puts him in a place right below DiMaggio in the modern age of baseball. When, on May 4, Jeter had his 20-game hitting streak for this season snapped, he had previously hit safely in 59 of 61 games dating back to last August. Excluding DiMaggio (who hit safely in his next 17 games after having his record 56-game streak snapped in 1941), the last player to have only two hitless games within a streak of 56 or more was Hall of Famer Ed Delahanty, who hit safely in 61 of 63 games in 1899. This research was compiled by Trent McCotter in the most recent Society of American Baseball Research journal. In other words, without any fanfare, Jeter has already accomplished something not done by anyone other than Joe D in this century.

After yesterday, Jeter’s streak was 73 of 76 games. According to McCotter, there have been 12 such streaks of more than 56 in which players have had only three hitless games, the most recent being Johnny Damon, who hit in 57 of 60 games from June 10-Aug. 20, 2005. But, again, Jeter’s surpasses the previous longest – George Sisler’s 67 of 70 in 1917.

Mr. Steady and the Bombers have their work cut out for them this week as they return to the Bronx to play the Red Sox and then the Angels. Just ask David Ortiz:

We’re playing well. We’re doing our thing right now,” David Ortiz said. “They need to figure out what they’re going to do to beat us. We don’t have to worry about it.

“I’ve been here for five years and we don’t need to worry about nobody right now. Everybody needs to worry about us.”
(N.Y. Daily News)

Giambi will be back in the line-up tonight. Abreu looked better on Saturday and Sunday, so maybe he’s starting to come out of it. Alex Rodriguez is struggling badly though. Aren’t they lucky? They get to face Knucksie jr, Tim Wakefield.