Holding It Them Down: Tribe-Sox Gamer III

Presumably, Daisuke Matsuzaka will not be vomiting between innings. Considering he can be doing that and still go five innings and collect wins in the American League, consider me sold.

Consider me also sold on the Red Sox' pitching, which entered this series with Cleveland arguably the best in the AL. Similarly, the Indians entered with arguably the best lineup. Thus far, however, the battle hasn't even been close. Future MVP Grady Sizemore is 0 for 7 with five strikeouts, three against Josh Beckett alone. Travis Hafner, who might be the most fearsome DH in baseball (sorry, Papi), is 1 for 8 with four strikeouts and a triple.

They say good pitching beats good hitting. Apparently tremendous pitching does the same to tremendous hitting. We know the Tribe will be bringing their "A" bats, trying to avoid the sweep. Let's hope Daisuke returns to his non-vomiting (and non-vomit-inducing) form and finishes them off.

Comment away! Lineups, courtesy the Globe, after the jump.

Sox
1. Coco Crisp, CF
2. Kevin Youkilis, 1B
3. David Ortiz, DH
4. Manny Ramirez, LF
5. J.D. Drew, RF
6. Mike Lowell, 3B
7. Jason Varitek, c
8. Alex Cora, SS
9. Dustin Pedroia, 2B

SP -- Daisuke Matsuzaka

Cleveland
1. Grady Sizemore, CF
2. Casey Blake, 3B
3. Travis Hafner, DH
4. Ryan Garko, 1B
5. Trot Nixon, RF
6. Jhonny Peralta, SS
7. David Dellucci, LF
8. Josh Barfield, 2B
9. Kelly Shoppach, C

SP -- Paul Byrd.

Comments

[attackgerbil]

You pitching idioms left out gerbil's corollary&trade:

"Mediocre, unseen left-handed pitching beats supposedly tremendous Yankee hitting"

[TJ]

While we await the game here are a few things I worked on today... More to come in the next couple days and if anyone has a good action picture of a top prospect or current star please email them to me at tliles at gmail dot com

http://img239.imageshack.us/img239/1151/pedroiajq5.gif

http://img365.imageshack.us/img365/2425/lester1fu4.gif

http://img108.imageshack.us/img108/9856/papelbonop5.jpg

http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/7799/williamslj0.jpg

[QuoSF]

Hafner hasn't really been himself this season.

Papi: 1.020 OPS
Hafner: .877 OPS

He's just not hitting for as much power thusfar. His OBP is where it needs to be, and his BA isn't too far off. They have the same amount of HRs, but Papi has 20 2Bs while Hafner has only 4! 2Bs and 2 3Bs.

Hasn't been nearly as fearsome as Papi this season.

[attackgerbil]

While TJ works on his images of the future, I have been working on one of my own.

[Devine]

Hit into the double play, Trot.

Jeez, Matsuzaka.

At the same time, I've made a deal with myself. I will not get mad until the Red Sox lose (or are losing) their third game in a row.

[rootbeerfloat]

um, eeek. I thought Dice-K was feeling better...

[Devine]

HE DID IT! DP!

[TJ]

LMAO GERBIL!

[Devine]

Relatively eventless inning for the Sox hitters.

[LocklandSF]

Gerb, that was funny. You're going to get crushed with traffic to that real soon.

[Ayuh - SF]

Now THAT was a legitimate dive by Coco. No going for style points there.

[Devine]

Coco has made that dive/grab sh*t routine. Ridiculous out.

[Ayuh - SF]

Well, the Yanks put up a 5-spot in the first inning. Wonder if Clippard will be able to hold it.

Over on LoHud Yanks, Peter Abraham is reporting that Phil Hughes' ankle sprain will keep him out an extra 4-6 weeks.

[Devine]

Dice-K not so impressive thus far, kind of all over the place. Gets to a 3-2 count with 2 out.

[Devine]

Aaaaaaand...single to right.

[Devine]

Stolen base.

[Devine]

Flies to right for the final out (Drew settled, then backed up a couple, then caught it fine).

[Paul SF]

I'm on a dialup connection with a computer that has no updated version of Flash. I hate Verizon.

[Devine]

Seems like a LOT of batters today are trying to hit it the other way with 2 strikes and often succeeding.

[TJ]

Find me one person who doesnt hate verizon :p

[LocklandSF]

Paul, just update your Flash plugin, it's real fast, even on dial up.

Now, why are you on dial up and how could you possibly not have Flash 8 or higher?

[Devine]

Lowell with a crazy slide to somehow make it to second, despite being very much later than the throw after Drew reaches on the second baseman's error. 2nd and 3rd none out for Tek.

[Paul SF]

So I have to "watch" the game through ESPN's regular Play-by-Play tab on their perpetually updating box score. The DISH Network guy's not getting here until Saturday. *sigh* You really miss the TV and Internet when it's baseball season.

[Devine]

Drew scores on the grounder to 1st, Lowell to 3rd. One out.

[Devine]

Cora pops to shallow left, Lowell can't score.

[TJ]

hmmm Cora sure cooled off huh... now shouldnt he be batting 9th and Pedroia 8th??

[Devine]

Popped up. 1-0 Sox after 2.

[Paul SF]

Lockland, we have DSL but Verizon screwed up our request to change addresses when we moved and canceled the service instead. So we have to wait for them to clear that order (next week), then open a new connection order (five to 10 business days). I'd say screw em except they're as cheap as any DSL service I've seen, and they're giving us the first month free for our inconvenience.

Anyway, I have a Mac that the DSL is on, and my wife has a PC laptop. So she got a freebie Juno account to check email with if/when I'm online, and we do all the heavy Internet lifting on the Mac. Right now, the freebie is all we have. It's a fairly new PC, so I'm not sure why we don't have an updated Flash version.

[Paul SF]

The only rational explanation is that it's not a Mac, and therefore inherently sucks.

[Devine]

Looked to me like Dice-K kind of turned a corner after strike one. Much better (to my eye) since then on movement/location. Gets the K.

And there's the second out on the second pitch of that at-bat.

[Rob SF]

Jays already getting blasted tonight 5-0

[Rob SF]

Paul, you are getting dish network? I just had that installed earlier this month with the regional sports package. Definately been a hit or miss with game coverage.

Is there something else you are going to get with them?

[Rob SF]

Dice looked a lot better that inning.

[Devine]

Hafner took it to 3-2, but grounds to short. First 1-2-3 for Matsuzaka.

[Rob SF]

Youk now with the 22 game hit streak with the single to left center.

[LocklandSF]

Paul, is it giving you an error message that actually says you need to update your Flash plugin? If not, then I doubt it's the Flash, it's probably the dialup, the GameDay app detects your connection speed, if it doesn't think you have the necessary bandwidth, it won't load. In those cases it should tell you why it's not loading, it should throw a message up that says you don't have the necessary bandwidth, but I can see MLB being lazy and not caring about that.

Either way, if it's a new lap top, even the IE it came with will have Flash 8 at least, then any browser you downloaded since, I know for sure would have it, like Firefox.

[Rob SF]

Papi lines out to the pitcher who doubles up Youk leaning to far off of 1st.

[Devine]

Ooof, glad I missed that. I hate line double plays (when they happen to the Sox).

[Tyrel SF]

I may be behind the curve on this one, but I just realized the game is on ESPN2.

[Devine]

Leadoff double Indians, Trot up.

[Devine]

K. Two groundouts, couple fly outs, whatever, just no hits, please.

[Rob SF]

Drew is overdue

[Rob SF]

Drew just cannot catch a break, grounds out, but at least Manny scores.

Sox 2-0

[Tyrel SF]

What was that 0-1 pitch to Barfield? Broke back over the plate... nasty.

[Rain SF]

Hafner doubles in Sizemore.

This lineup scares me.

[Rain SF]

Game tied, 2-2.

Now it gets interesting.

[kyoto]

Daisuke not pitching well at all. His tempo is terrible. Aiming not throwing. In Japan in games like these his best innings would often come in the seventh, eight, and ninth. They'd be 140 pitch games though. If he's hanging on, leave him in?

[Rob SF]

I am getting killed by typepad

[Rob SF]

I just got verify comment 17 times in a row!!

[Rain SF]

Another double given up by Daisuke. David Dellucci doubles in Trot, who doubled earlier on fan interference.

A doubles parade.

[Rob SF]

Type pad is killing me tonight

[Ayuh - SF]

Interesting idea, Kyoto, but I don't see the Sox leaving Daisuke in- I think they'd consider it too big a gamble with his arm.

Baseball people here are very much creatures of habit. Around 110 pitches, and they take a pitcher out, regardless of performance.

[Ayuh - SF]

Wow, what a nice play by Manny- dekes the runner at 2nd and throws out Barfield.

And Grady Sizemore loses one into the pen. Ouch.

[kyoto]

Daisuke getting worse and worse. Make him run suicides after the game!

[Ayuh - SF]

Wow, you guys are tough on your pitchers out there, Kyoto!

[Rob SF]

Finally out of the inning

[Kyoto]

Ayuh-SF

Agreed, though it is a fairly recent habit. Certainly wasn't like that in the seventies or before. The thing about Japan is all the weak arms are bludgeoned by junior high and only the strong survive. American arms are protected from pony league up and a lot of weak sinews make it through. Given how much pitchers pitch over here there certainly seems to be much less problems with injuries as compared to America. I don't see this as a contradiction. Ninety pitches, a hundred and ten, a hundred and forty, for Daisuke he doesn't really understand the difference. Anyway, terrible sixth inning by Daisuke so we won't get the chance to see whether he was just warming up or not. Though I would have preferred to see him punished and made to finish out the game anyway ;-). Terrible outing.

[Rain SF]

That's it for Dice. Snyder is in.

[kyoto]

"Wow, you guys are tough on your pitchers out there, Kyoto!"

But after a little Spartan re-education we all go out for beer, sushi and karaoke, so few complaints. Balance. Balance.

[Paul SF]

Downloaded Flash, and that works just fine. MLB's GameDay requires Flash 9, which is the source of the problem. Anyway, works great. Wish I could say the same for Daisuke.

[Rain SF]

I saw this article about babying pitchers in America, too. Apparently Dice was really really "abused" over there. But when the Sox commissioned for an MRI of his shoulder, it was clean. And I hear he never puts ice on his arm, either.

[Paul SF]

Rain, that's a myth. Tom Verducci had that in his SI cover story before the season started, but he's worn an ice pack after each start this year, and I think it was Rob Bradford who reported that Matsuzaka has in fact always used ice.

[kyoto]

Look at Nolan Ryan. Always high pitch counts. Pitched well into his forties. Clemens for that matter. The nature of the ligaments and all the goo that connects muscles and bones together differs greatly from person to person. I'm not sure if someone who is put together well and who has good form that emphasizes the legs and thus saves wear on the arm really has to worry about pitch counts much. Put it this way: Pavano's career would've ended in the fourth grade in Japan. Anyway, Daisuke was definitely pitching scared tonight. Terrible tempo. But the Sox still have a shot. Rally.

[Rain SF]

Yeahm karaoke! Love karaoke. :P

6-2, Indians. The Tribe really roughed up Dice tonight.

[kyoto]

Even in high school he used ice after games and long practice sessions.

[kyoto]

Not to mention a lot of massage therapy and acupuncture. The only thing taken care of better in Japan than pitchers are Kobe cattle.

Three innings to go. Back to the t.v. in the other room.

Shitsurei shimasu.

[TJ]

Pedroia is rolling!

[Rain SF]

Hmm..Tom Verducci.

Remind me never to read him again. :P

Sox lose tonight, but wqe win the series. 2 out of 3 ain't bad.

We go for the Yankee jugular this weekend.